“The single-access war has started and the key differentiator will be TV,” says Hugo Suidman, Marketing Manager for Interactive TV, KPN.
“By 2010 we believe that 70% of households in The Netherlands will have just one connection for all their communications services. So we must have a good offer in TV to retain our connection with the customer.”
KPN launched IPTV in mid-2006 and spent the next few months developing and improving the service. "We learned what worked, set priorities for improvements, and developed our roadmap," explains Suidman. "Now we are working hard to increase the uptake and are seeing good results. We will also be working to bring the service to customers over ADSL2, VDSL and fiber technologies."
Currently, KPN offers subscribers a choice of two TV packages. The IPTV service, called 'Interactive TV', priced at €9.95 per month, offers 50 TV and 80 radio channels and includes a tuner with hard disk recorder and advanced functions such as Electronic Program Guide (EPG), pause live TV and catch up TV. Meanwhile the Digitenne DVB-T service priced at €6.95 per month offers a basic set of channels. Both services can be bought as a package to bring IPTV to the living room and DVB-T to other rooms in the house.
New ways to watch TV
These service packages are just the beginning of the transformation of TV for the consumer. Suidman believes that two key areas will drive the change, the first being interactivity. "Traditional TV provides entertainment for viewers who want to 'lean back' and simply watch," he says. "People will always want to do this, plus they can much more easily find the content they want."
However, with interactivity, consumers will 'lean forward' and interact with the content and with advertisers, as well as producing and sharing content with each other. With the rise of Web 2.0 and increasing community services over the Internet, consumers are already accustomed to such interactivity.
Convergence will take TV everywhere
"Secondly we see every screen as a way to show TV," Suidman continues. "Traditionally the TV has been a static screen in people's living rooms. In the future there will be new ways to watch TV, on mobile devices, in the back of the car, on the train, or even incorporated into other household appliances. Converged TV will bring the same experience everywhere."
Keys to success: relevance and ease of use
However and wherever it is delivered, TV must offer extreme ease of use to encourage its adoption.
"TV is so familiar to everyone that our service must be very easy to use or people simply won't continue with it," says Suidman. "And it must be always relevant with personalized content. Our ambition is to offer customers a vast range of content that they can access through an intuitive search solution."
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