Going OTT: Playing Cool With Rookies As A Service Provider

Over-the-top (OTT) content providers and OTT video services that monetise traditional service providers’ infrastructure — fixed and mobile infrastructure in which these operators have invested heavily — are shaking things up in an already competitive market.

OTTs are using software-defined networking and virtualisation to reap the benefits of the infrastructure and access networks of bigger players — with great success. The new forces in play are gaining a lot more awareness from traditional service providers.

At the moment, we’re witnessing a change in the market. Mobile service providers are under a lot of pressure to reduce costs in their network and keep pace with new challengers, such as OTTs. Because OTTs don’t need to maintain complex network infrastructure, they have the ability to build flexible and elastic delivery frameworks.

This agility allows them to react to the changing requirements of users and provide services at low cost and, in some cases, for free supported by advertising. The demand for these services is growing, as consumers access more video, entertainment, social networking and so forth.

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