Carriers: The New Entertainment Moguls?

In this week’s Telephony e-newsletter, Carol Wilson examines the threat vs. opportunity of Internet video.  Her analysis is short and sweet, but right on the money - growing consumer demand for high-bandwidth services like on-demand Internet video presents an enormous opportunity for carriers to generate new revenue, but only provided they can support its delivery.  This is a huge “but” for some and, as Carol points out, bandwidth caps and metering of services aren’t necessarily the answers to the problem. 

Carol wraps up her piece by noting the future opportunity carriers have “to earn a permanent place in the entertainment business, provided they don’t frustrate their consumer audience in the process.”  She’s absolutely right and the carriers who we will be reading about in the future as having emerged victorious are those who read her story today and thought, “Let’s start planning now.  We’re going to dominate that market.” 

While the holy grail of network planning is certainly a just-in-time model, it’s equally important that carriers know what opportunities are coming down the line and what they can and should be doing today to make sure their networks can handle whatever is thrown at them tomorrow.