Telcos in Australia can profit from online content

It has been claimed by an industry experts that telcos in Australia are in a unique position to profit from online content, despite this area being traditionally dominated by Hollywood studios.

It has been claimed recently by an industry official that teclos in Australia are in a ‘unique position’ to benefit and profit from online content. Online content has become more and more popular as a result of more widespread and higher speed broadband, and telcos in Australia could really cash in on this according to Internode MD Simon Hackett, who was addressing the Telecoms World Conference.

Hackett stated: “It’s probably the reason why Hollywood hasn’t moved into this country as fast as people might like it to, apart from the overall market size is the fact that there’s a perception those download caps are a barrier to take-up by consumers here. I actually think they’re not nearly as much of a barrier as Hollywood might think.”

He went on to state: “In the US you have this whole conversation around network neutrality, which I interpret as being the outbreak of the tension with unlimited value providers who don’t have a way to charge for the higher amount of data, and the fact that they’re being used as an easy transport path without being part of the value chain.”

He also added: “So in Australia we’re standing here with download caps – actually that provides us with an opportunity as an industry to say ‘well we can take that [content] off the meter, but you need to… make us an active part of the value chain in return. And that’s unique here. The issue comes down to making sure everyone on the value chain can actually get paid. Because in the act of unmetering stuff we’re actually giving away stuff that previously we were charging for… the issue then of course is what happens when you unmeter a massive firehose.”

Source – Commsday