Strategy Paper for Overcoming DTAG Market and Technology
Advantage
This paper was created for a venture capital company and
subsequently used to target cable accessible markets in
Germany. The paper has been parsed in this forum to
separately cover Digital TV, Broadband Data, Video on
Demand, Telephony, Interactive TV, Gaming and Colocation.
VIDEO ON DEMAND
Video on demand viability depends upon two things,
1. Costs entailed 2. Compelling content
Offering VOD in the German market will take a different
execution strategy and cost structure than is commonly used
today. In the German market, much of the content which
would be offered on Pay per View, is available for free
over the airwaves. Also, infrastructure would need to be
financed and built to allow VOD, which is not a common
service currently in most cable systems. The two VOD
dependencies go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the
other, and each is the solution to the other.
1. Costs – The VOD architecture uses the existing upgraded
(800MHZ) system and some parts of the Broadband Data
network. Hence some costs can be amortized toward those
services. VOD is in use already in some cable systems,
although not in Germany. Through the use of COTS cable
equipment architected to provide the capabilities planned
for, the use of existing VOD equipment and architectures
can be acquired and implemented comparatively economically.
This means the R&D costs are non-existent, design costs
are minimal and equipment manufacturing costs are spread
across multiple cable operators. Individual equipment or
systems costs can be shared by content partners, which is
covered in point 2 below. 2. Compelling content –
Compelling content must be identified. Easily content
should solve a demand. The non-fluent German speaking
population is poorly serviced currently by cable companies.
VOD presents a strong opportunity to market to these
communities in their own language, offering content wanted
by these communities. An example would be offering German
language and citizenship video, movies from their native
countries, popular shows from their cultures, etc.. The
individual cost should be kept as low as possible in order
to compete with video and dvd rental outlets. My
suggestion for acquiring content is to partner with the
German firms which want access to the millions of cable
customers. Non-German firms (ethnic) content should be
sourced the same way current German content is sourced.
German content providers should be sourced for content by
signing short term multiyear contracts. The Content
providers would market this service, and bid for the
opportunity to provide content to our millions of
customers. The money from the bids can be used to allay
costs.
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Sean DAniell is a internationally seasoned I.T. executive
with highly effective technology and organizational
management experience that increases profitability. Mr.
DAniell has extensive experience in creating, managing and
guiding thriving, successful startup and Fortune 500
technology departments.
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