How do cable companies delivering good ‘ol triple play (voice, broadband and cable TV) stay relevant in the age of Whatsapp, 4G and Netflix?
Not all that many years ago, you couldn’t go to a telco or OSS trade show without some middle aged guy making a quip about how his little kids’ experience of technology is so different from that of the telco professionals in the room. Like, “Little Johnny expects everything to be a touch screen!”, and “Little Poppy doesn’t understand why she can’t watch CBeebies in the car!”.
How we laughed.
But now… Now everything is a touch screen, and CBeebies is available in the car, and Little Johnny and Poppy are 21 and we call them Millennials.
And now it’s not funny anymore, because Mr. Johnny and Ms. Poppy aren’t buying the communication services their middle aged dad bought.
Dennis Stevens of Shaw Communications has some ideas how to fix the business model though: It’s time to move on from triple play.
“Particularly with Millennials, they don’t see the need, so they just don’t buy it. They’re not even in the market. What are the jobs people are trying to do? How do I put that in terms of a product that’s easy to understand, easy to purchase, easy to use, easy to provision and is there a sufficient business model around it to sustain it?”
New customers means new services, new OSS/BSS to deliver those services, and new models for customer support.
“Nobody wants a cable guy in their house. How do we do this all digitally so there aren’t call centers? How do we push our businesses more into these digital models?”
Answers at speculation over at Lightreading.