@ Perspective 2010: Operators must embrace over-the-top partners

FRISCO, Texas – Wireless operators are going to have to partner with over-the-top content providers in order to stay relevant to end users, Genband CTO Fred Kemmerer said at this morning’s Genband Perspective 2010 conference for financial analysts, trade press and technology analysts.
Social networks are actually communications providers, Kemmerer said. Facebook, for example, offers posts, video calling, instant messaging, content sharing, presence, location-based services, a common address book and can be connected to from multiple devices – the vision operators were talking about when they conceived blended networks. “The over-the-top world is realizing the blended services vision operators have talked about.” Further, Facebook has 900 million users, more than any operator worldwide.
Along with partnering with other-the-top providers, service providers are moving toward tiered-pricing models and mass personalization of services to create stickiness with end users, Kemmerer said. Instead of two or three tiered-pricing models, service providers will move to ala carte plans so that instead of an end user buying the entire HBO package, for example, the end user can customize to decide which content he or she wants to consume and the accompanying pricing model. Genband is planning on smart infrastructure solutions to enable that customization, Kemmerer said, and is working at traffic policy and management initiatives to enable that vision. Heavy video Internet users may be willing to pay $3 to $5 a month for quality of service guarantees that allow them to make sure their video experience is worthwhile. Today, YouTube’s traffic is the same as all of the combined Internet traffic that occurred in 2000. “Imagine what that will look like in 10 years.”