Company contribution
We’re not in 2020 anymore
The pace of change
brought about by Covid
has introduced innovation
and customer expectations
that were not predicted to
happen for years. But they
are here now. And there
is no going back, suggest
experts at digital satellite
platform Freesat.
Lenin is believed to have said: “There are
decades where nothing happens; and
there are weeks where decades happen”.
That statement undoubtedly rings true for many
industries, and ours is no different. The pace of
change has been so quick and so vast that many
operators need to re-invent or re-think their
proposition to keep up.
Whilst challenging, this provides nimble
organisations with a great opportunity to create
a service that goes to the heart of those changes
and meets new customer expectations.
A new ‘last mile’ challenge
The trend towards more flexible working has
been happening for some years now. However,
the impact of Covid, when so many of us
suddenly found ourselves having to work from
home alongside our partners, housemates and/
or children had a huge impact on the demands
placed on the products and services we had in
place.
As a result, we’ve seen switches to superfast
broadband almost double between February and
March, according to Comparethemarket.
The CPE market for advanced routers and
WiFi boosters had already started to become
more competitive with many of the main
providers already offering these products to their
higher-tiered customers. But, with consumption
habits and patterns changing, perhaps
permanently, this will only intensify.
“The home is now either part of or is ‘the
last mile problem’,” says Andrew Ladbrook,
Director of Strategy at Freesat. “This presents
alternative networks with a challenge of how
they will compete with more established brands
and services. With the increasing demand for
connected entertainment, owning the TV is a key
battleground.”
Video takes centre stage
No one would be surprised to hear that since the
start of Covid-19, video consumption is up, both
for work and play.
“The need to stay connected to the office has
led to a boom for video conferencing platforms
such as Zoom and Microsoft Team across
all devices (laptops, tablets and mobile).But
we’re also seeing increased usage over ‘more
traditional’ platforms like our set-top boxes,”
says Ladbrook.
Ofcom’s recent Media Nations report showed
that at the height of lockdown, the average
daily viewing hours increased to 6 hours and 25
minutes, driven significantly by SVoD viewing
which was one of the great beneficiaries of
people staying at home. During this period, over
12m adults took up a new SVoD service; which
for many will have been the third, or possibly
fourth, service they subscribed to. In fact,
according to research conducted by MTM, SVoD
is the first place nearly a quarter of people (24%
to be exact) turn to when looking for something
to watch. 1
Traditional TV viewing also benefited from
lockdown with increased viewership. Indeed,
Freesat also saw a sustained increase in the use
of use of its boxes of some 10% year on year.
However, the make-up of that use has changed
considerably, in part due to the more connected
nature of the new set-top boxes launched earlier
this year.
What this means is that high-speed
broadband is now required both into and
throughout the home in order for customers
to have their needs fulfilled. This is why
the government’s initiative to improve the
broadband infrastructure in rural areas and
traditional not-spots has never been more
important.
But, if providers are to make the most of
that infrastructure, then their TV platform
and infrastructure needs to be just as reliable.
Fortunately, a reliable infrastructure does
exist and has done so for many years. The UK
currently has over 20m homes with a satellite
dish which can be connected to a Freesat set-top
box to bring consumers over 170 channels, many
in HD, as well as providing them with access
to popular On Demand services such as BBC
iPlayer, ITV Hub and Netflix.
The potential benefits of having a proposition
that can bridge the new hybrid TV and
broadband worlds are clear and voluminous, so
long as the experience is right.
1
MTM ScreenThink Wave 6 (H1 2020)
16 EUROMEDIA