Next Generation Networks have made broadcasters telecom companies and vice versa. A telecom operator is your television broadcaster and the company that provided content to your television sets is offering you telephone services. As an end user, it might rarely be affecting or could even go unnoticed. But, for the industry it matters a lot.

First of all the competition has increased manifold. Earlier the competition was among the telecom companies only or broadcasters only. But now the two industry segments are face to face. On top of it, the market dynamics have become very complex. The current communications and media market is a hybrid one that inherits characteristics from the parent industries. How well the synergy goes or the repulsion needs to be noticed?

In case of telcos, there is a competition within the industry as well between the fixed telephony operators and the cellular operators while in broadcasting there is no such thing. However, there are also different modes of offering the content like cable, satellite, etc. So these operators are also competing at a different level.

Both the segments have an incumbent that was essentially state owned in every country. However, the telecoms got used to other players much earlier than the television which is still being operated and owned by the government in many countries.

Without bias, I feel telcos have a better chance to win the market. Telcos have been living in competition for a long time now. There have been private ventures in the telecommunications market much earlier compared to the broadcasting towards which private investors looked at a later stage and the regulations also enabled that very late. In some countries, this is still not allowed.

Agreed, that in telecom also, the governments still have a major stake in the incumbent operator and many of the things are designed in such a way in the telecom market, that suit the incumbent only. But, at least there is an alternative provider.

Customerisation in the telecom is something that happened in the industry much earlier than in broadcasting. We had customer support, in whatever form, in the telecom, but in broadcasting it is still absent in many countries. Mobiles changed the telecom scenario in every country. The market commoditised, service approach changed, value added services concept got deeper and meaningful and lot many services emerged. The broadcasting market did not witness such a change. Though there are now alternatives how you want the content to be delivered in to your home television set; the market has not become competitive like the telecoms.

Technically as well, telecom operators have worked for a long on managing the network, keeping it up 24x7x365 and dealing with different technologies. They have also been in the environment where they are used to offering several services over one line.

With all these advantages and learning that telecom operators have earned during these many years, they are well positioned to better connect to the end users and that is very essential in this era of interactive technologies. My vote goes for telcos and definitely they will emerge as winners.

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