These days find network operators scrambling to launch a service bundle that includes telephone, television, broadband and mobile – the service quad play. Conventional wisdom dictates that you need all four services to compete effectively, and the drive to build a comprehensive offering has produced some unlikely combinations. Last year, phone companies began reselling DirecTV satellite television and cable companies formed an alliance with Sprint (the only telephone company without a DSL offering or an IPTV service in the works) allowing them to resell mobile phone service.
This year, the cable and satellite television players have formed industry alliances to participate in the FCC’s spectrum auction. It is expected that they will collectively spends BILLIONS of dollars for the licenses, in an effort to plug up their holes in their coverage. While plans have not been made public, it is also expected that these companies will then use the bandwidth to offer telephone and mobile services in the hopes that consumers will want to buy all four services from a single source.
While this may be true in the near term, I predict that the services revolution will soon make this strategy obsolete. For reasons I blogged about here, it is exceedingly unlikely that any single company will be successful at putting together a potent mix of network access and content (services).
When that happens, consumers will be shopping for a pipe provider that can give them unfettered access to the content and applications they desire – at home, on the road, and in the workplace.
Today, between my two homes in New York and Manila, I have no fewer than EIGHT different telephone and broadband accounts for home and mobile access. A single provider that could give me broadband access at home, in public hotspots, on the road, and while roaming outside of the country is what I really need. My single VoIP phone number would follow me on whichever network I happened to be using. Done. Throw in some essential tools to make my online life more pleasant (things like presence management, online payment facilitation, parental control and privacy enhancement) and my dreams would be met. THAT is the quad play I am waiting for.
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Related: Wall Street Journal, Business Week