Urban population has been increasing at a growing pace throughout the world. This new urban generation is different, not just in their preferences but also, how these preferences are defined and fulfilled. A large share of this new urban population is connected to the internet, especially in emerging economies. The proliferation of smartphones or feature-phone is higher than even the television or radio. And this presents a great opportunity for the digital content providers and telecom service providers both.
Clearly enough, telecom service providers offering engaging and diverse content to their subscribers will have a distinct business advantage. However, there are two challenges you will need to understand before jumping to the solution:
- The devices accessing the internet (or digital content) are changing globally
- The traditional big production houses are not the drivers of digital content
Devices Accessing the Internet are Changing Globally
In a 2011 report by Cisco, personal computers found mention as the highest internet traffic grossers. In the same report, it was projected that by 2015 this traffic would be down to 87%. Guess what, by the end of 2016, only 45% of global internet traffic came from PCs while mobile phones accounted for about 50% of it (see Figure 2).
If you see the device trend for internet access, there are only two segments which have a positive growth rate – Mobile and Other Devices. Other devices include gaming consoles, e-book readers, home appliances, Smart TVs, and every other device (remember the urban living).
As the growth rates suggest, smart devices like TVs, Gaming consoles, vehicles and security systems will have more share of this traffic in future along with mobile phones.
What does Digital Content Provider Want?
Multichannel publishing of digital content has been a major challenge for digital content providers. While 10 years ago it had been a manual process requiring hours of rigorous work, now we have content management systems for the same. 
Some OTT service providers, like YouTube, are already taking advantage of multichannel publishing.
Multichannel publishing directly meets almost all the demands of content providers and network operators.
While a digital content provider would like his/her content to be available to a large audience (often on the global stage), a network provider wants the subscribers to spend more time on the network.
Solution – Digital Services Platform
The only way to ensure this is through a centralized digital services platform where content providers and network operators can converge. Such platform will lead to:
- For Network Operator
- Access to vast amount of content for the network provider
- Zero infrastructure cost
- Lower content procurement cost, as content is sourced directly from the creators
- For Content Provider
- Single platform to publish all types of content (including apps)
- Digital asset management (DAM) for cross device optimization
- Lower Time to Market (TTM) for content
- Access to global audience
Evolution of Digital Content Landscape – Future
The Type of Market
A January 2016 article published in ‘Strategy&’ “Understanding digital content and services ecosystems,” authors presented an evolution matrix for the digital content ecosystem based on the development stages observed in the most developed countries (Figure 4).
As you can see in the figure 4 countries will start from Quadrant II (low per capita spending + low advertising spending) and will gradually move to Quadrant IV (high per capita and advertising spending + good e-commerce availability). As a network provider, you can adopt content strategy best suited for the market(s) you operate in, as per these quadrants.
Changing Content Consumption Patterns
Additionally, trends in global digital content consumption show that consumers are shifting from content ownership to streaming content (figure 5). Thus, anytime a user looks for a type of content, he/she is skimming the internet for it.
Right content, at the right moment, can improve the CLV and help reduce the churn telecom operators. This is possible to achieve for operators with the help of a digital services management suite, which is equipped with real time analytics.
The results of real time customer usage data analysis can help offer an appropriate suggestion to the user or even pre-empt the search itself, leading to customer delight from satisfaction.
Opportunities for Digital Content Providers & Network Operators
Digital content space is evolving fast. Especially with increasing proliferation of mobile phones. Today 55% of the world is connected to the internet thanks to mobile phones. More than 100 countries with an estimated population of 3 billion +, currently have internet penetration of less than 50%. The average growth of internet population in these countries had been approximately 15% between 2015 to 2016.
Much of this is expected to be driven by mobile usage, and data consumption on or through mobile, presenting a huge opportunity for digital content consumption. A major part of this opportunity can be captured by:
- Local Content Providers
- Cross device content accessibility (mobile, computer & television)
The integrated content delivery platforms present an opportunity for brands as well, to source and run campaigns through user generated content (another revenue opportunity for telecom operators).
