Do incumbents there seem to think that folks will buy TV service and then get the broadband as a delivery vehicle? I wonder with such a low penetration rate if consumers there really see broadband as that important. Maybe selling TV that just happens to be delivered via broadband is the way to go.
Pay TV and broadband service penetration is actually very high for household segments A & B offering limited room for further growth, so the best strategy for these segments is upselling premium services.
As we descend the Pyramid, the main market challenges faced by incumbents are to massively penetrate segment C, a matter of service affordability, as well as to expand the enabling technology infrastructure to lesser-populated areas, a matter of investment prioritization. Making things more complex, there are still fierce regulatory restrictions preventing the incumbents from offering wired TV services.
To overcome, incumbents Oi and Telefonica heavily invested in DTH over the past couple of years, so is GVT now pursuing its own satellite license to launch services, and as a result the market for Pay TV grows above 20% average since 2008. Once regulatory restrictions are lifted, the three players will be ready to offer wired solutions.
In my opinion IPTV will only benefit the Incumbents.
Right now, the Pay TV has basically two models here in Brazil:
- Cable TV
- Satellite TV
The biggest Cable TV company is called NET, and they also provide Broadband Internet and Fixed Phone via cable. This company belongs to the same groups as Claro (Mobile Operator) and Embratel (Long Distance carrier), which is Telmex.
Satellite TV has obvious problems to bundle broadband with TV.
On the other hand, the broadband providers with the biggest penetration are Oi and Telefonica, the two big fixed phone line incumbent, which uses xDSL. But they do not offer TV services. Oi has a very small sort of "trial" with Oi TV, but it has not invested that much on TV.
For the biggest Cable TV operator, I don't see such a benefit on IPTV. Satellite is the same case. Only for the incumbents the IPTV would be a great benefit, if they want to budle TV/Phone/Internet.
Anyway, maybe this is a short sighted view. Maybe new players will come in hand with IPTV.
Do incumbents there seem to think that folks will buy TV service and then get the broadband as a delivery vehicle? I wonder with such a low penetration rate if consumers there really see broadband as that important. Maybe selling TV that just happens to be delivered via broadband is the way to go.