What all do you need to become an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in India?
A license, good deal with an upstream provider, Billing System, Core & Delivery Infrastructure, that's it? Yeah! it was enough for you if you were running the ISP business a decade ago and yes the customers were happy even with 1Mbps of the speed. Are you still in the same business model even now? Sorry! you are on the losing path, things have been changed a lot, people offering broadband in Gbps. Internet speed has never been a selling proposal nowadays. What else is driving the market now? The Content!
Yes the OTT (Over The Top) content driving the internet market for few years, nearly 80% of the data consumption of an ISP covered by the OTT traffic and it is growing. And the overall consumption by a user is also being multiplied due to the content access. At the same time Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) has gradually been reduced over the years. Multi-folded data consumption with reducing revenue is really not a good sign for a viable business model in the long run.
How are the big providers managing this? A decade back the telecom operators having bunch of value added services (VAS) for additional revenue from their existing customers, like caller tune, sports updates, etc,.. now the value addition is just about the content bundling. The more OTT content you bundle you create more opportunities for direct revenue on the OTT subscriptions and indirect revenue on the customer retention, advertisement, etc..
Is it feasible for a Large, Medium, and Small sized operator to invest and manage the OTT platform of their own in a viable way? Certainly yes! Thanks to the SaaS (Subscription As A Service) model platforms like Skie.TV who enables the level playing field for the OTT platform for any sized ISPs. With a amazing time to market strategy, diversified content data base and of of course with a profitable business model.