Belgacom reported a further rise of 52,000 IPTV customers during the third quarter, to reach 920,000 in total or 21% of the total TV homes in Belgium, a rise of 6% on the installed base during the quarter and up some 39% over the past 12 months, up more than 250,000 homes. So far it has sold 800,000 ‘packs’ or bundles which means it is selling a double or triple play. The Belgacom system was built using the Nokia Siemens owned Myrio middleware, Verimatrix conditional access and initially I3 Micro set tops, which have been supplanted by Nokia Siemens set tops.
Belgacom TV says that it will now move on from pure IPTV and develop a next-generation interactive platform called ‘Belgacom Entertainment.’ It paints a vision of customers being able to view any content, on any device, anywhere at any time and says that it will build this around 3 new partnerships.
Earlier this year, Belgacom took an investment in OnLive, which provides instant-play online gaming delivered to TV, PCs, phones and tablets and it looks like this will be delivered like TV Anywhere is in the US, more like ‘Entertainment Everywhere,’ so that existing Belgacom customers can get this for free or have it added to their bundle. It has also announced exclusive partnerships with Jinni and in3Depth systems. Jinni is a search and recommendation system for online video, and in3Depth Systems is a local specialist in 3D-gesture recognition.
So expect Belgacom to challenge the Microsoft stranglehold in gesture control of TV sets (see story elsewhere in this issue). This technology will allow customers to manage and control user interfaces, applications and devices through hand and head movements and possibly voice.
All of the Belgacom efforts in Pay TV have delivered it a slightly reducing Average Revenue Per User of €19.7 per home per month, and the company is slowly eating into the lead that the Liberty Global owned Telenet has in Belgium. This will come out with figures this week, but last quarter it showed that it was losing around 0.75% to 1% of its 2.3 million customer base each quarter, as it slowly upgrades its network to digital from analog, and upgrades the customer base. So far Telenet is only just 46% of the way through this process, so there will be more low hanging fruit for Belgacom for at least another year, probably two.
On the other hand Telenet has sustained an ARPU of €35 per month, almost double that Belgacom, so it has some ways to go to catch up on that front.
The investment Belgacom made earlier this year in Israeli-based Jinni was around $2 million, and Jinni offers something close to a movie genome approach, which categorizes video content using several thousand different parameters or ‘genes’ covering mood, style, setting, atmosphere, pace. Its recommendation system learns your ‘movie personality’ based on what you watch, as well as ratings you give to search results. Belgacom’s investment in in3Depth Systems was $4 million which focuses more on the interfaces for gesture control rather than the underlying technology.