Partnership – the key to providing better content services

Panellists discuss alternatives to increasing ARPU at a session at MECOM yesterday

In the quest to raise consumer spending and develop innovative content services, telecoms operators should focus on their core business and partner with media firms, stated head of new media at MBC Group, Ammar Bakkar on the second day of MECOM.

Speaking on the panel in the session ‘Exploring new opportunities to increase ARPU’, Bakkar commented that creating content requires a completely different mindset and investment strategy, compared to developing and marketing basic voice and data services.

“Partnerships with media companies seem more productive because they have already established their brand in the content association with people,” Bakkar said.

“Users know media companies as the channel to receive premium content. Developing a new brand by operators will be a very difficult situation, so a partnership in my opinion is the solution.”

MBC Group is currently producing a 30-episode comedy series specifically for mobile handsets, which even for an established media company brings new challenges.

“The experience wasn’t easy,” added Bakkar. “We found out that writing for mobile was different because you have to enjoy the comedy in only four minutes, you need to zoom in all the time, and also use different types of cuts to make the file light.”

Also on the panel was Rasheed Al Safi Alhuraibi, director of strategy development at Oman Mobile, who commented that as operators move from becoming technology-centric to customer-centric, a focused approach would be required to raise ARPU levels.

“Differentiation is very important, but also puttingthe services at the right time and targeting the right segments markets. Timing is very important,” he stated.

Ignacio Couto, senior manager of telecoms at Neoris, used the example of Telefonica and Apple doing a joint deal for iPhone users.

“There is data that shows those users have increased their ARPU by about 30 per cent,” Couto stated.