“Operators are currently at a beginner’s level of capability exposure for developers. They need to step up their game, look at how enterprises have solved this problem. Deliver a rich, secure, reliable, well managed API framework that makes applications both cool and reliable over their networks, else developers will simply choose OTT providers”
Sean O’Sullivan
Incumbent CSPs are under threat of losing revenue share to OTT service providers. The barriers to entry are rapidly devolving, so innovative new OTT services are coming at the CSPs from all directions and diminishing their revenue share.
Regardless of R&D budgets, the CSPs can’t possibly innovate fast enough to challenge viral OTT services. Seth Godin states, “A bestselling book/record/movie/consultant/tech startup might make a thousand times more profit than one that’s only seventy or eighty rungs lower on the best seller list.” He also goes on to say that number 80 on the list may actually lose money.
Can the CSPs guarantee a constant stream of hit services that are at or near the top of the best-seller list? Under their current business models, are they nimble enough to compete?
I’d venture to say that the likelihood of them producing a stream of hits is low and won’t be able to drive enough revenue to keep the incumbents afloat. But perhaps that’s where the telco APIs come into play. If they’re attractive enough to developers, the CSP can be assured of having a piece of the revenues from all developers on the best seller list.
Does your CSP provide APIs that include the following functionalities or more:
- Subscriber Location
- Subscriber Profiles (eg age, sex, etc)
- Billing / Charging Policies
- Single sign-on
- Address Book / yellow-pages
- Connection status
- Network stats (eg alarms, performance, SLA, etc)
- Specialised functionality (such as broadcasting content management)
Or do you struggle to even get a basic portal functionality from them?
Most OSS vendors have internal APIs, but they can bridge a significant gap here with consolidation platforms to offer APIs to their customer’s (the CSPs) customers (the OTT developers).