Expect Internet OTT Charging Changes

According to the Informa Telecoms & Media report Internet Innovation, the Internet content-delivery market “will undergo huge changes over the next decade as major telcos and Internet giants, including Google, Amazon, Netflix and Microsoft, wrangle over the continuing OTT Internet traffic content boom,” adding “by building out their own extensive Internet distribution networks, these Internet giants also hope to alleviate the telcos’ pain over traffic volumes and push aside the growing calls from some operators for OTT players to pay volume-based wholesale charges for the traffic they send to local-access networks.” However, Informa notes several reasons why calls for a more formal model for charging large content providers will be unsuccessful, including a lack of universal support and the growing deployment of new technologies for OTT traffic management. Instead, expect to see such arrangements as bandwidth-management strategies, content caching and delivery technologies.