Advanced Television

Conax CEO: OTT better opportunity than IPTV

May 25, 2011

By Colin Mann

Berit Svendsen, CEO of content protection specialist Conax, has revealed that the company’s strategy is more focused on introducing products to market that support the OTT challenge than specifically serving IPTV as a platform.

With a strong client base in satellite, digital terrestrial and cable, Conax only has sister company Telenor Nordic deploying its content protection and revenue generating software over its managed IP network. “We’ve focused on the broadcast business rather than the IP area,” she admitted, suggesting that there was a need for a good network infrastructure for IPTV to succeed. “Not all IPTV networks have been a success,” she said.

Svendsen said the company is looking at business opportunities in protecting both broadcast and OTT, and suggested that pay-TV operators must join the OTT battle to survive, but recognised they needed help in doing so.

Conax’s strategic OTT objectives were to remain a single-source, overall security service-provider for pay-TV operators, and OTT distributed video services, with the intention of preventing churn by offering OTT support such as information, recommendation, solutions and support, as well as realise new services with optimised security.

She defined the OTT business opportunities for existing operators as enhancing the existing service and making revenue more sustainable. “Emerging OTT service providers will generate new business,” she said, adding that a flexible range of proprietary OTT components would make Conax an attractive partner for OTT solutions.

Despite the focus on OTT, Svendsen noted that in Latin America – a target market for growth – there was a high demand for IP networks for video.

Categories: Articles, IPTV, OTT, OTT