CTAM EUROSUMMIT ’08 – BERLIN. Belgian cable operator Telenet is faced with a very strong opponent, the IPTV service from Belgacom, but still manages to make advanced services such as VOD and the PVR into a profit centre, we learned from Benny Salaets, director media projects at the operator, during the session How to win the Video War in a changing landscape.
“Belgacom is at the forefront of IPTV, perhaps even in the world. So we need high-end video products as a defence against our main competitor. Having these services is important to have the same value proposition. “VOD is real profit centre,” said Salaets, “but we are perhaps the only one in Europe to have done that. Our market is different from the UK or The Netherlands. The Dutch market, for example, is spoiled by the free VOD from the public broadcasters.”
George Stromeyer, VP service provider video at Cisco, told the audience “We see a 46% compund increase in traffic growth fueled by video on broadband. This is real, this is happening and this is having a dramatic impact.” Stromeyer predicted that Visual Networking would become the next biggest traffic driver on broadband. “In 2010 video overtakes peer to peer; in 2015 video communication overtakes video content.”
Stromeyer also said that cable in Europe – a few exceptions aside – is lagging far behind in high tech applications, “Much of Europe is lagging behind with PVR, HD, VOD, a lot of ARPU is now slipping away. And the telcos all have HD, PVR and VOD, because they think it is essential.”
Salaets agreed that one of the challenges of the future will be to extend the digital cable experience to the other TV sets in the home. “Today we have analogue as a major differentiator from our competitor.” Getting digital across the home is made difficult for cablers by the conditional access system, this is much easier achieved by delivering IPTV streams.
