Telcos and streaming – Here’s how it can actually work

TELECOM companies across the region have for many years shown great ambition in meeting their subscribers’ desires for entertaining, informative and compelling content. Media rights for global sports events – while generating a lot of attention – are notorious lossmakers. Prime US entertainment comes at a heavy price tag too. So how can telcos monetise their content delivery infrastructure without overspending on content production and acquisition?

Singapore’s telco market leader Singtel announced in July that it has now achieved 95 per cent 5G coverage in Singapore. Like many others, the firm has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade its network for the age of ultra-high speed, ubiquitous bandwidth, as well as other business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) applications including cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, and smart factories.

5G has opened up an enormous amount of broadband data capacity, a lot more than what is currently utilised. Telcos are now looking to use that bandwidth to better define their consumer value proposition, by bundling their services with streaming offerings, including entertainment and online gaming which have been very lucrative and important to recoup some of the investments.