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‘I love piracy’ says former Disney exec as panel debates the impact of OTT platforms

Debates on the impact of OTT are global. Al the way from Australia to Singapore, India, and the U.S. there have been major discussions. The impact of OTTs is also an OTT issue – OTTs are dealing with piracy, easy entrance by others to the market, lack of differentiation and more.  On a panel at “All That Matters conference” in Singapore, Samir Bangara, co-founder of Indian youth-focused online broadcast network Qyuki Digital Media, said that the biggest problem for content creators at the moment is getting discovered, and piracy helps to “find what is working.” He added that – “What is getting pirated is probably successful. Game of Thrones is great, so it’s going to get pirated,” he said.

Shufen Lin, the VP and head of entertainment and SmartLife at StarHub, said that StarHub launched an OTT service, StarHub Go, to combat piracy and protect its pay-TV business, and the launch of shows such the latest season of Game of Thrones through a deal with HBO was helping to give consumers the legal means to watch their favorite content. However, Lin said it was difficult to compete with pirated sites in Singapore because they offer content that can be downloaded or streamed censorship-free.

Another key challenge facing OTT providers and pay-TV operators alike as they fight a losing battle against piracy is creating a brand that is well differentiated in an increasingly cluttered market. “It’s very difficult to find a sustained differentiator that cannot be copied or overtaken,” said Lin in response to a question about how OTT brands can stand out.

In Australia

The ACCC has released an Issues Paper for its study into the telecommunications industry in order to examine new and growing telecommunications trends that are expected to have a significant impact on competition in the fixed and mobile network services industries.

The ACCC will be examining the “significant” changes that have occurred in the communications market — including the emergence of the National Broadband Network (NBN) company as the primary fixed-line provider; the impact of OTT providers; the sharp increase in data usage thanks to streaming services such as Netflix; and the growing reliance on mobile data and Wi-Fi rather than fixed-line internet services.

The Issues Paper — which will not be examining the universal service obligation (USO), as it is being addressed under another government inquiry — is also looking into whether mobile network infrastructure should be shared across Australia.

In India

The Indian Journal of Science and Technology that published a very comprehensive research article about “The impact of OTT Services on Telecom Service Providers” and concluded that the impact of OTT services on decline of telcos’ voice and messaging revenue is a given reality and their impact on mobile data traffic and telco data revenue has been acknowledged as critical points for consideration.

The impact of OTT business models such as OTT services like WhatsApp, Skype, and Netflix, neither contribute to the direct income of access providers nor to the government’s tax revenues. But, they use the communication networks and necessitate additional network investments. The impact of OTT services does lead to higher data usage and additional revenues for the telecom operators thereby offsetting the loss due to decline in messaging and voice revenues to some extent. The most determining factor of the Impact of OTT services will be the government and regulatory stance towards them.

In the U.S.

TechSci Research, a research based management consulting firm providing market research. Published the report – “Global Over The Top (OTT) Market By Content Type (VoIP, Text & Media, Video), By Platform, By Deployment Model, By Service Type, By User Type, By Revenue Model, By End User, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021”, they forecast that the global OTT market is projected to surpass $64.9 billion by 2021, on account of growing trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), rising adoption of cloud computing, expanding market for Internet of Things (IoT).

Additional highlights:

1. Netflix accounted for the highest market share in global OTT market in 2015.
2. In 2015, media & entertainment sector was the largest end-user of OTT market. Increasing demand for online content such as online publishing, Internet TV, online advertising, and online short & long videos, is anticipated to fuel exchange of online content in media & entertainment sector.

More Here [mumbrella] and [zdnet], and [indjst]

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