Today, I woke up and directly went towards my tablet, which has apparently taken the place of my bedside lamp for the sake of digital convenience. As soon as I tried accessing one of the popular social media site, the app couldn’t sync. Immediate thought on my mind was that my operator (internet service provider) has conked off and I should change my subscription to a better & reliable service provider.

As in the later part of the day, slowly the analytical side of my brain started opening up, I realized I never thought of taking a jibe at the social media OTT provider. Case may be that it might have lost few servers while serving me or some other flaw at its end. I would have migrated to some other operator and my current service provider would have taken a hit through loss in SAC (Subscriber Acquisition costs), subscriber & revenue base without his fault.

Former is the usual thinking most of us have, which has Operators now realize that data is not a product – it’s just an enabler and hence they need to move on from their strategy to commodities data.

Such realizations have resulted in a wave of OPERATOR – OTT Partnerships;

Deezer (a Spotify competitor with 20 million users worldwide, 6 million unique visitors to their website per month and more than 1.2 million premium subscribers) have partnered with Orange group to provide their music streaming service to Orange customers.

Advantage for Deezer is that they get access to a huge market of Orange customers also, for Orange they got a new revenue stream via revenue sharing with Deezer. Not only higher revenue, but this engagement solved a churn problem for Deezer by 60%.

Whatsapp has already changed the way of messaging, Further, WhatsApp has launched a pre-paid SIM card in Germany giving users unlimited messages outside of their data plans.

The German network E-Plus will sell the €10 SIM card giving users 600 credits that can be used interchangeably for 1MB of data, one minute of a phone call or one standard SMS text message and unlimited WhatsApp messages.

Another news if of TripAdvisor partnering with O2 to offer O2 Travel. To avoid data bill shock in roaming while watching the content of TripAdvisor using O2 Travel.

Operators have strengths over OTT players, which they can leverage and bring to table to develop a mutual growth ecosystem.

1. Relationship with customer and a Call Center Network
2. Existing “trusted” monetary engagement with customer
3. Behavioral data of its customer, through calling and location data
4. Global Telecom Passport- MSISDN (Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Number) or simply put, the telephone number to theSIM card in a mobile/cellular phone

Look forward to experience wave of such partnerships in 2015!