The NextTV CEO Summit took place in Miami this week, and we found out what the major players in the Latin American pay-TV sector had to say about the OTT revolution, NetFlix LatAm expansion, governmental regulations and more.
Carlos Moltini, CEO, Cablevisión Argentina:
“We need to find out if the Netflix revolution is a substitute or an addition to our offerings. We bought Nextel to offer our clients a mobile solution in major cities. In the US, Comcast has a huge budget with a large professional staff to innovate and market its services, which is something that is hard to do at a smaller scale.”
Steve Oetegenn@VerimatrixInc, President, Verimatrix:
“I think trying to fight the Netflix revolution would be a mistake; creating valuable, relevant content is the key. Tech providers are bundling silos that operators must work with. Tools like forensic water marking are important to the industry.”
Saúl Kattan Cohen, President, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogotá (ETB):
“Look at Blockbuster: hundreds of stores, but did not react to the digital evolution and Netflix took the space over. DTH will succeed in small markets. Some in our space will become aggregators, others will become triple play, but everyone has to compete in the Netflix space, transform technology and provide solutions for the market.”
Eduardo Stigol, CEO, Inter Venezuela:
“The challenge in Argentina is that one government agency looks at content while another looks a technology, so regulation on the Netflix model may take some time. Access to bandwidth is still a challenge, while some like Movistar offer limited technology and cut rates to concentrate on volume.”
Tom Wirth, Senior Vice President Americas, Nagra:
“Cable operators cannot expect to keep adding more channels that the market does not want in order to increase rates. Millennials do not want content that they don’t want so the industry has created the Skinny bundle, a few channels at a discount. And users are even going to free air, not in large numbers but a small percentage nonetheless.”
