In 2013 more than ever technology is the gateway to greater subscriber fees, writes Julian Clover.
So first it was the double play, then triple play, and latterly quad play or as Sir Richard Branson famously described the addition of mobile to Virgin Media’s product portfolio, four-play.
The ever-expanding basket of services available across satellite, cable and IPTV services suggests that terms to describe the number of available products might be running out.
If you look at the product portfolio, platforms are now piling on the value, as well as the subscription price. This is the strategy in ARPU building and making a distinction with free-to-air platforms that have increasingly rich offers. PVR, HD, multiscreen services to a greater or lesser extent either attract a fee of their own or provide the means to increase the basic subscription.
This is the trend to watch across the operators during the coming months.
The set-top boxes be it TiVo or Horizon – not forgetting the Sky+ HD units and certainly not YouView and Freesat’s Freetime are becoming grander.
However, at the bottom end of the market the set-top box – if indeed it is still possible to balance one on the ever-thinner screens on which we do our viewing – seems to be disappearing.
Keep an eye on those Samsung sets that are TeliaSonera is working with or any of the manufacturers – and there are many – that include a cable tuner as standard.
CI Plus has made great inroads in Europe but there are some operators, many of them among the UPC/Liberty Global affiliates, which are now dropping encryption on basic channels.
It’s almost like renting a television – as we used to do from Radio Rentals – the alternative being the free offer of DTT.
Of course the subscriber doesn’t get nothing for nothing. It is all in the fee.
