Win customers by targeted content and leveraging billing assets

Taken from Total Telecom's article "Time is right for telcos to profit from mobile TV"

By Mary Lennighan, in Barcelona
Tuesday 23 February 2016

Operators can win customers by offering more targeted content, leveraging their billing assets to encourage consumers to make small purchases.

Customers are willing to pay more – to a certain extent - for the right multi-screen TV service and that could mean an additional revenue stream for telecoms operators, provided they get their propositions right.

As networks evolve, telcos are able to provide multi-screen offerings and mobile apps in addition to their standard home broadband and TV offers. And while consumers, particularly the younger generations, expect this sort of capability as standard, there is still some incremental revenue to capture.

Telcos' billing assets give them a big opportunity in the market, by facilitating low-value transactions on the part of their customers.

A customer is more likely to pay for a movie rental or sign up for a Netflix package, for example, if they can add the cost to their regular bill, and as a result content providers are more likely to give a small revenue cut to the telcos.

Customers are very happy to pay a slight premium, on top of a standard home broadband and TV package for a TV bundle that comes with the right content, said Lewis Insight.

Customers will pay for their fixed and mobile connectivity, but operators can generate "thin-ish layers of revenue [on top]… as long as it's not extortionate".

This is especially true for telcos competing with high-end cable packages, where customers are paying a premium for a plethora of channels, many of which they don't actually want. Telecoms operators can be more relevant by offering more targeted content.