OTT Services: Telcos calls for collaboration.

According to the President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr Olusola Teniola, the partnership of both the Telcos and the OTT models will forged to transform business to address the digital transformation taking place right now.

Over-the-Top (OTT) services are services provided over the Internet, bypassing the traditional distribution or communication and are generally lower in cost than the traditional method of delivery.

Earlier, the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Danbatta faulted telecommunications operators on one sided arguments on regulating OTT services in the country.

Danbatta posited that the presence of OTT services have stimulated demand for network expansion and the demand for data.

“What the operators failed to say is the way OTT services stimulate demand for data.

“We have noticed tremendous increase in data usage for the past 12 months because people buy data to access the free OTT services.

“Again, the operators will not say how the OTT stimulate demand for network expansion, and this means making more money,”Danbatta noted.

Reacting to this, Teniola stated that both sides have a point.

According to him, “on the side of the telcos, it would appear that their main sources of revenue voice and text,multimedia message service (MMS) services are regulated by NCC; however Skype and other VoIP services are excluded.

“WhatsApp also is based on the SMS service of the mobile network operators (MNOs) and again not regulated.

“So the infrastructure built by the telcos is being used by OTT apps and revenue generated is partly attributed to the MNOs. This reduces the revenue realisable to them,”he said.

However Teniola explained that, “The usage of OTT apps has increased data usage on both the MNO and internet network providers (ISP) networks which means that the losses through the traditional sense is now being substituted by the revenue realised from data usage.

“The reality is that OTT players generate their revenue from advertising and marketing, so it should be a win-win situation if partnership of both the Telco and OTT models are forged to transform businesses to address the digital transformation taking place right now.

“So whilst I empathise with situation the telcos find themselves in. The reality is that change is constant and the consumer requests the innovation OTT players bring to improving their daily lives,” Teniola concluded.