LAS VEGAS – Both wireless operators and TV and radio broadcasters are looking over their shoulders at the threat of over-the-top content providers to wreak havoc on their businesses. That shared uneasiness is leading the two industries to point fingers at each other instead of cooperate to find new business models that work for everyone in the value chain.
During two sessions at yesterday’s NABShow, sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters, wireless operators’ business plans for the future seemed at odds with broadcasters’ plans – and that is without even addressing spectrum issues. Broadcasters want to mobile TV chips inside wireless devices to offer live TV, video and emergency alerts to consumers. Broadcasters also would like FM chips embedded in wireless devices to offer live radio, mobile marketing and emergency alerts to consumers. Wireless operators also plan to offer music and video services, mobile marketing and emergency alerts to consumers. Is there some overlap here?
Broadcasters are planning to build out mobile TV networks using broadcast frequencies. The broadcasters realize they need to put mobile TV chips on wireless handsets, but also are realistic in that operators aren’t going to add a chip to a cellphone unless consumers demand it. Likewise, broadcasters are trying to get FM radio chips embedded – and more importantly activated – in cellphones. During a panel session yesterday, broadcasters almost seemed indignant when they found out that iPhones have embedded chips but are not activated by U.S. operators. How could you be denying people access to radio?, they seemed to say collectively.
CTIA’s Brian Josef did a fine job of diplomatically explaining that wireless carriers aim to give their customers what they want, and to date it hasn’t been FM radio.
For their part, broadcasters see an opportunity to partner with wireless operators to deliver emergency alerts and deliver mobile marketing campaigns using the FM signal. (Sound familiar? Alcatel-Lucent is just one company touting a solution that does just that to wireless operators using cell broadcast technology.) Later, during a panel on mobile TV, the message was the same: broadcasters are hoping that cellular operators’ network pressures force them to look to broadcast signals to carry mobile video. Further, broadcasters pointed to Japan’s horrible earthquake and following tsunami, commenting that the cellular and landline networks went down and people got information from their mobile TV service.
The problem, of course, is that both industries are looking for new revenue models and to remain more than dumb pipes. Broadcasters cannot like hearing that people are spending more time in front of their laptops than their TVs. And operators are sick and tired of people using their cellphones to connect to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without getting a piece of the action from the over-the-top providers.
Perhaps somewhere in the discord between the camps lies an opportunity. The two groups have never been good friends, but they are facing the same problems – and that can sometimes unite the most unlikely of bedfellows.
