We're the losers in the video streaming war

video streaming services

I’m launching a new Telco Service here’s some of the features I’m hoping to include in my customer proposition.

  • There will be no fixed line or cable access.
  • While the service will have technical capability to call any phone number, you won’t be able to call just any number you want.
  • We’ll have a directory with the numbers you can actually call on it. Some won’t be there, but many will, maybe a third of all the numbers you’d like to call.
  • The provider of that phone number will need to have agreed to let us call up that number, if they say no, we won’t be able to list it.
  • Some people will give us access to their phone numbers, on the condition that we don’t give access of that phone number to other Telco’s.
  • Sometimes we’ll buy access to a set of phone numbers on the condition that the owners of those phone numbers don’t give anyone else access.
  • While we’ll promote how many phone numbers we actually have – many thousands and millions, but you probably won’t be able to reach two thirds of the phone numbers you want to call.
  • In order to get access to the phone numbers you want, you’ll probably have to sign up with at least 3 or more Telco’s – it turns out that all of us behave the same way.

In case you didn’t guess, the phone numbers are the content, and the Telco’s are the Entertainment Streaming Services. While this example is a bit extreme and nuanced, this is our current situation on entertainment in the home. If it seems upside down, that’s because it is. Both content providers and streaming services are literally solving their own problems and not that of their customers. Imagine a search engine which excludes sites on purpose? Or a drivers licences which only lets you on certain road networks? It’s archaic.

Hopefully sometime soon they’ll realise their are no shelves and limited space to what can be sold. I dream of the day when content providers decide to sell to anyone who wants to buy it, where they want to buy at the time it is released. It will go some way to stopping piracy too. Often there’s a big prize for organisations who actually listen to what the people actually paying want – especially when incumbents say it isn’t possible.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.