This conference is part of the Broadband World Forum series of events run by Informa. It brings together many of South East Asia’s telcos and media companies to talk about how new technologies are impacting the broadband and media business models.
Obviously a big theme was the rise of Over the Top (or OTT) video. Netflix is now available on a pretty much global basis and many media companies are looking to work out how to survive and grow in the new world of on-demand video using high quality broadband.
It was interesting to see some new companies making a significant impact at the conference. MyFedAsia launched a federated OTT media model under the “Klix” brand to enable media companies to quickly get on board the OTT wave.
A number of media security companies (Verimatrix and Nagara Kudelski) used the opportunity to promote how important digital rights management is in the OTT age.
Huawei and ZTE were the dominant telecom equipment vendors at the conference. And interestingly Intel also made a big show in line with their recent investments in telecom chipset manufacturers (eg. Sckipio a leader in G.Fast developments).
It was also great to meet up with some like minded challenger telcos like MyRepublic who are expanding aggressively with operations now in Indonesia and New Zealand and plans to grow in their Singapore home with a bid to pick up the 4th mobile operators licence.
My presentation covered Hong Kong Broadband’s recent OTT partnership announcements with LeEco and TVB. The audience were particularly impressed with how Hong Kong Broadband is able to monetise its “Big Fat Dumb Pipe” through strategic bundling opportunities that “embrace” OTT.
The presentation must have had some impact as I was given an impromptu invite to join the immediately following panel on “How Can Telcos Win in an Increasingly Competitive Market?”. The focus was on how telcos can turn the threats of the OTT video wave into profitable growth opportunities.
I was also invited onto a panel to discuss National Broadband Network plans in different markets. I was joined by representatives of Singapore’s Infocom Development Authority (IDA), Huawei and ZTE. It was a great opportunity to contrast the different models of Singapore, New Zealand and Australia (where I was CTO for five years). The Indonesian audience were very attentive as the country considers the best way to implement high speed fibre broadband across the geographically challenging and diverse Indonesian archipelago.
The best summary of the dialogue is that reported by Digital News Asia in an article headed “Infrastructure and Competition Key to Indonesia’s Broadband Plan”.
