I’ve been thinking a lot these past several months about carriers and OTT: how can they survive? should they join the OTT game? Cooperate? Buy an OTT player?
There seems to be a new trend now that LTE is upon us – a way for carriers to sidestep this challenge. I’ve bumped into it the first time reading Tony Brown’s analysis on Informa about mobile VoIP in Korea:
After lengthy deliberations, the KCC came out on June 26 with a decision allowing operators to charge subs for access to these OTT mVoIP services, provoking an immediate strong backlash from subscribers and Net Neutrality advocates.
And the reason behind this decision?
The KCC […] has said that its main reason for placing restrictions on mVoIP access is to protect the wider telecoms market from the potential revenue losses caused by OTT mVoIP services, including those offered by US giants such as Apple, Skype and Google.
Andy Abramson takes that a step forward, predicting this is how LTE deployments will be “configured”:
Look at what just happened in South Korea. This will only happen more as LTE rolls out, as the quality of calls on LTE is vastly better than over first generation GSM 3G or CDMA, and markedly better than on HSPA+ networks due to spectrum allocation and better handsets and tablets.
It is rather easy to see KCC’s stance on the subject in South Korea – their logic is simple. Instead of taking the voice calling business from local mobile carrier companies and handing it over on a platter to global players such as Skype, they make sure their local companies get compensated. It is a case of import tariffs that are put in place to allow local companies to compete with global players.
Net neutrality is sacrificed for the benefit of national corporations.
Will other countries join the game? Yes.
Will it last and how long? Who knows…