Serving TV to bulk and commercial customers can be a challenge. The challenge is that, while the TV offer is similar to that offered to residential consumers, it is sufficiently different that standard offers cannot support it or the effort/cost to support the nuances required by these customers can be high. Bulk and commercial customers can represent a significant opportunity for operators for services from broadband to hosted contact centers to connectivity and TV can be a requirement to be successful in this market. Technology has now evolved to a point where operators can create TV offers for this customers that meet the requirements and do so with cost points that make sense.
What’s driving the change?
Operators and large organizations view TV services as a valuable revenue stream on top of broadband driving increased penetration and stickiness and also bring additional monetization opportunities such advertisements.
Operators need to upgrade their network in order to deliver the high-capacity broadband services that residential and commercial customers increasingly need. As operators upgrade their networks with 5G or mobile technologies they need to find TV solutions that can serve these bulk and commercial customers,
In an operator footprint the bulk and commercial customers can be as diverse as bars/restaurants; doctors’ offices/lobbies; Universities; Residential homes; MDUs/HOAs; hotels; prisons; gyms and so on. Ignoring this market is not an option.
The Cloud is a game-changer
The legacy model is bulky and has a range of operational impracticalities that make it challenging when deployed in smaller deployments. It can also take too much time and effort/cost to tailor the residential offer to meet the needs of bulk and commercial customers. It cannot meet the growing demands of customers for smarter advanced services. The shift towards cloud-based services is the key that opens up these opportunities. A cloud-based platform allows operators to provide existing bulk and commercial customers with tailored video services with the right features and with time to market and cost points that make sense.
Premium streaming video services can now easily be bundled with broadband or other business services. This enables small and medium operators to retain their commercial customers as they upgrade their networks and develop new revenue streams.
A gap in the market
Bulk and commercial systems are very similar to legacy residential systems, but the differences that do exist can require a large amount of complex work. This makes them less attractive to some of the largest operators, creating a gap in the market for smaller, more nimble operators to target. The vehicle for doing this is a cloud-based video service with a range of features such as EspialTV.
IP-based infrastructure enables monetization opportunities through customizable channels and community advertising. This latter feature is increasingly popular in community compound cases. The need for significant hardware and cabling is reduced by a BYOD (bring your own device) approach. This means that innovation in bulk and commercial systems is happening in software that is focused on media players, web browsers and mobile devices.
EspialTV makes it easy for operators to configure services for the commercial customer via a simple Web UI. This enables a quick set-up of the services to be delivered, the channels to be included and any branding that is going to be applied to the deployed services.
This flexibility and simplicity make it highly efficient to supply tailored services to your customers where in the past customer demands made this a potentially expensive sector to service effectively.
You can learn more about these changes and the opportunities that are opening up by downloading our whitepaper.
