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Julian said “Although broadcast channels and streaming services alike saw a big jump in their audience numbers at the start of the pandemic, the streaming services are the ones who have held onto these gains."
Press reports that Sky is in advanced talks to co-invest in Virgin Media O2’s upgrade of its cable network to full fibre are something of a surprise, with a host of issues for both parties to carefully consider
The muted deal would be somewhat negative for BT (although limited by Sky’s c.15% market share in VMO2 areas and regulatory protections/upsides). It is, however, a stark reminder of the precarious economics of alternative networks such as CityFibre
Whether this makes VMO2 more likely to extend its network further is a more critical issue, certainly for BT
James said there will come a point when the fixed cost of satellite deployment outweighs the income from customers, but that was still “many years away”.
“There is a good example in Spain where Telefonica – the BT of Spain – had an IPTV service. It merged with Canal Plus’s Spanish satellite TV service in 2015. It brought across all the content and immediately shifted the focus to IPTV. After they merged it was about 37pc satellite. But five years later, satellite still has an 11pc share with around 400,000 customers.”
"Certainly the fault is with Telecom Italia,” says François, who thinks that the streaming snags are solvable in the long run.
“It’s just that [at present] it doesn’t look good, commercial wise marketing wise,” Godard adds, noting that “when you have technology problems, people don’t rush to buy your product.”
As well as presenting quality entertainment, it’s in the BBC’s remit to expose its audience to a broad range of content. “If personalisation or recommendations are making people's access to any content difficult,” says Tom Harrington ”and therefore [limiting their exposure to] new ideas, programmes that are socially important ... the BBC is failing at one of its core jobs.”
Tom said "It is a testament to the rarity of problems with DTT/satellite transmission that this got so much attention – compare that to IP delivery of video, which can still often be somewhat dicey, especially with live events.”
Netflix’s decision to launch games as part of the subscription bundle is smart business: rewarding current subscribers, leveraging its IP, and signalling that subscription is the best long-term revenue model in the games space.
Expect technological innovation to be central to Netflix’s ambitions with games. Netflix will make it easier for different game experiences to occur, and ways to attract external developers will inevitably follow.
For Disney, Netflix just made the battle for customers more difficult and more expensive. Disney will need to make hard decisions about how to approach the games business—something it has shown before it finds difficult to do.
Karen said “You can have two networks in most areas, some can support three, but after that it’s an accident waiting to happen... We don’t think all the current players will survive."
James said Virgin Media O2 is “the main driver” behind the achievement. “People who didn’t have great speeds are now leaping up to gigabit capability."