The Economist writes that both fixed and mobile telecoms operators are getting into television:
The cable companies are entering the telephony market, so the telecoms providers have got to do something, says Andrew Cole, of A.T. Kearney, a consultancy. In some countries, including France, Italy, Britain and Japan, incumbent operators also face competition from insurgent operators (Iliad, FastWeb, HomeChoice and Yahoo! BB) offering triple-play bundles over high-speed phone lines.
To compete, the incumbents need to get into TV too. TV is no longer optional, says Ford Cavallari, of Adventis, a consultancy. If they don’t do it, someone else is going to.
Mobile operators, in contrast, see TV as a nice to have rather than a must have service. Technical trials have shown that mobile TV is possible. Market research suggests that consumers might pay up to 12 ($16) per month for it, says Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, a consultancy. Unlike complex 3G data services, which are proving to be a hard sell, mobile TV could have mass appeal. Everyone gets it if you say mobile TV’, says Richard Sharp, at Nokia’s multimedia division.
