Over-the–top is a term Telcordia's Grant Lenahan would like to see go away. Because if it does, it means he and the Tier 1 service providers he calls clients will have done their jobs and convinced content providers there is value in those broadband pipes beyond their ability to deliver bits.
Over-the-top content will instead take a route right through the middle of the delivery chain and its owners will gladly pay for the added value the network providers provide: quality of service, authentication, location and personalization, to cite a few examples.
As vice president and strategist for service delivery at Telcordia, Lenahan’s preferred term is Content-over-Broadband. He will deliver a presentation at the upcoming Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo named exactly that. Co-written by Von McConnell, director of new partner management at Sprint Nextel Corp., the presentation describes a practical mid-point between over-the-top approaches and traditional walled gardens that benefits both players by allowing them to both participate in the revenue stream.
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| Telcordia's Grant Lenahan |
Lenahan recently spoke with B/OSS editor Tim McElligott about turning OTT into COB.
It is assumed telecom carriers haven’t figured out the right approach to over-the-top content, but do the OTT guys have it figured out either?
Lenahan: Some do. Some don’t. Take one particular over the top service: search. Google has that very well figured out. But few content guys have it completely figured out. Take music, for instance. You can say Apple has it figured out, but look what happened to music revenue; it’s fallen by about 60 percent. So they found a model that worked for them, but it trashed an industry. I would say that model didn’t work, though I am sure Steve Jobs disagrees with me.
If you look at Hulu and Amazon and Netflix, I think they are still very much looking for models that will make true premium video work on the Internet.
Do you have any other examples?
GL: Well, let’s separate stuff that really cost money and has value from pictures of my dog tight-roping on YouTube, which cost me nothing and all I am trying to do is make you laugh. It’s more about, how do we offer first run movies or second run or current TV shows or sports for which you may pay $50 million or more for the franchise rights. Right now there is not a model, either for ad-supported or fee-supported content that is making a lot of money.
You see the same thing with newspapers and magazines. Publishers spend a lot of money on research and journalism, then their content gets stolen by the blogs and Yahoo! and Google who put the stuff on their pages to attract eyeballs.
