A new survey of decision makers at 100 top communication services providers in North America by CSG International, Inc. found that 31% of telecommunications organizations and 44% of cable organizations said “enabling content portability” would play a key role to their ability to provide digital lifestyle services to consumers.
But many of those survived also worried that other aspects of making content portable - personalization, device authentication, and multi-device access to content from a single account — posed some serious challenges in their ability to profitably deliver digital content.
Besides portability or mobility of content, the “Supporting Today’s Digital Lifestyle” survey noted that “settling charges and revenues among complex partner ecosystems and driving revenue through cloud- or machine-to-machine-based services” where key issues facing telcos and cable operators trying to meet the demands of digital lifestyles.
“Service providers of all stripes are in the midst of monumental business transformation to ensure their networks, billing, and operational systems can keep pace with changing — and growing — consumer demand,” said Chad Dunavant, VP of product management, at CSG. “The increased need for portable video content, apps, music, and more across a wide range of devices means the deployment of high quality systems to support the customer experience, revenue generation, and partner management is key to profiting from today’s digital lifestyle.”
The survey found that 62% of respondents saw growth in digital content delivery coming from business services, such as cloud-based or machine-to-machine-based services.
But 66% estimated a 50% or more increase in the number of content partners that would “require revenue settlement capabilities over the next three years,” and 39% of respondents said the challenges of settling those revenues and charges would be “a primary hurdle” in their efforts to produce profits from digital content delivery.
More than half (54%) also noted that managing network traffic sources in real-time was “a top capability” needed in their revenue management systems.
