A failure to understand content has been a key factor in holding back telcos from becoming successful ‘mediacos’ according to Gerry O’Sullivan, Vice President of Global TV and Entertainment at Deutsche Telekom (DT).

In a keynote address at the IP&TV World Forum, O’Sullivan admitted that telcos often struggled with the specific needs of content owners when negotiating rights for their IPTV platforms. “We’d need a whole team of lawyers,” he observed. “The people we deal with are very protective of their content. We find the whole world quite challenging.”

He also recognised that customer confusion existed in the TV Everywhere era, accepting that people would wonder why they were unable to watch certain content on their chosen device while on vacation overseas.

While recognising the importance of content, he also accepted that European telco TV networks and services often lagged behind their global counterparts. “We’re a bit slow and being outstripped by our friends in Asia.” DT’s approach was to offer hybrid services where appropriate. “We offer a best of both worlds strategy.”

He said that moving to a cloud-based model was the only way to deliver content to multiple devices and that telcos were best placed to benefit from such possibilities. “I think it’s going to be the telcos, the experts in cloud provision, so they will have an advantage in delivering services from the cloud,” he suggested.

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