OTT messaging is having a massive impact on the good old world of SMS and voice services – but can it be monetised and brought into the telemedia fold?
So pondered Rohin Ravindran, CEO of 12 Telecom. He pointed out that, while data is now 12% of MNO business and that it was likely to increase – and that messaging was under growing pressure from OTT services such as Facebook messenger and Google Voice, there is no tried and tested way to monetise OTT.
“Skype has a billion users give or take, and it has never made money,” he told delegates. Instead he floated the novel idea that OTT’s value lies in enabling transactions.
“The largest publisher in the world is Facebook, yet it makes no magazines. YouTube is one of the world’s largest TV channels, yet it makes no programmes. Instead, their value lies in enabling transactions. After all, commerce is just a conversation that ends up in money changing hands,” he said.
This is where the value in OTT lies.
How to realise it remains to be seen, however, 12 Telecom’s OTTX platform aims to try and put that right. It make creating, running, collating and monetising OTT services easier to do. Stay tuned, more to come on that one.
