MyBundle, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based startup providing a software-as-a-service solution to 185 U.S. tier 2 and 3 broadband providers that helps their 10 million-plus customers stream video, has formed a key strategic partnership with U.K. tech company Bango.
Cambridge, England-based Bango, which has already established extensive technological ties to a wide range of major streaming companies through its relationship with Verizon Plus Play, will now help MyBundle facilitate its integration of streaming services through its Bango Digital Vending Machine platform.
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MyBundle has already established inroads with streaming providers including Sling TV, allowing the startup to integrate components like customer billing and more easily “bundle” the Dish Network virtual pay TV service through its broadband constituents. The Bango partnership, MyBundle co-founder and CEO Jason Cohen told Next TV, will significantly expand access to a roster of services for which MyBundle will have deep technology integration.
“This makes it easier for us to both sell and bundle streaming services through our broadband partners,” Cohen said. “We’re taking the integrations Bango already has and plugging them into MyBundle. Bango has already built the pipe.”
MyBundle, meanwhile, continues to staff up. Not only is it on the lookout for a marketing director, the company’s distributed remote ranks next week will also add another new director-level hire to oversee streaming content relationships, Cohen said.
The Proposition
MyBundle has focused over the last several years building partnerships with smaller ISPs, many of them connecting to rural constituencies via new fiber.
These clients long ago abandoned the notion of linear video and are turning instead to solution providers like MyBundle, which not only creates a UX for their customers that includes search and recommendation functions, but is also expanding tools that enable these broadband service providers to bundle streaming services with their broadband.
For streaming companies, meanwhile, Cohen is pitching entry into undiscovered rural country.
At a time when the federal government has committed $42.45 billion to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program (BEAD) in an effort to provide faster internet and more choice to rural citizenry, Cohen believes the major SVODs and other streamers can tap into a robust previously untapped market.
While some surveys have shown that up to 85% of U.S. adults use Netflix either via their own account or someone else's, Cohen noted, that benchmark falls to around 50% for MyBundle's rural constituency.
“Many of our broadband providers are rural, laying fiber to people whose only previous option was satellite internet,” Cohen said. “Many of these folks have never had streaming before.”
MyBundle’s ISP constituents are also putting down fiber in markets that were previously only served by big cable operators like Comcast and Charter Communications. Those cable-heavy markets, he added, are ripe for cord-cutting via MyBundle.
In executing MyBundle’s master plan to connect millions of high-speed-internet customers, rurally situated and otherwise, to streaming services, the breakdown has been, “How do we turn on the streaming services for you?” Cohen said. “Bango solves these pain points.”
