Mid-East confusion over telco content

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The fifth annual Arab Advisors Group media and telecommunications conference kicked off in Amman, Jordan, June 2 with telecoms executives swapping business cards with media players. The challenge was summed up by Mr Osman Sultan, CEO of Emirates-based Du. He said the problem was like an Egyptian movie.

“We want content. Everything, everywhere is my motto. But we are moving from an era where we operated with unshared certainties to an age where there are shared uncertainties. We [telcos and media] need to be like a typical Egyptian movie, where there are plenty of adventures but at the end of the day there’s a happy ending – and a marriage.” He stressed that Du sought co-operation between themselves and broadcasters.

Peter Kariaropoulis, CEO at Bahrain’s Batelco, said the major questions for the Middle East generally remained unanswered. “What are the revenue-sharing models? Can we ally and cooperate with one another? In my view customers are dying to get TV on their mobiles. But we don’t know what content to offer, or how we might make money out of content? There’s a compelling case for co-operation.”

But Kariaropoulis stated that in his view the amount likely to be earned from programming would be low in terms of ARPU, and he did not see content winning support from 40%-50%-60% of his subscribing customers. “It is difficult to imagine,” he added.

Dubai-based MBC, in the shape of Sam Barnet, CEO at the multichannel free-to-air broadcaster said his channels were reaching some 86m viewers every day, and would shortly be adding another channel to the portfolio, MBC+. He admitted that there were two very big grey areas for telcos. “Telcos can go direct to the studios and create their own channels.” He said this was already being done where telcos had the benefit of a mass-market. “But the second grey area that needs resolving is that of advertising. We depend on ads, and how this problem is addressed is key.”

Ross Cormack, CEO of telco Nawras, owned by Qatar’s Q-tel, said that co-operation was extremely important in the Middle East, where pay-TV had not established itself beyond a million or two homes. “We have tended to assume we own our customers. We know who they are, where they live and even where they are using their phones. This information is hugely valuable for broadcasters.”



Source: Rapid TV News