Then available in the archive section on demand

Network operators have traditionally held their networks close, viewing ownership and control as the source of their value as organisations. But with the dominance of the Internet they now find themselves trading in a broad ecosystem which appears to operate on different principles to those they've always followed. Many of the ecosystem's most powerful members prize collaboration and openness and treat with apparent disdain the traditional business practise of openly 'leveraging' existing assets and power positions in pursuit of greater profitability.

This event asks the overarching question: how are telcos to operate in this environment? Should they stand apart and continue championing only vertically-integrated services such as operator-delivered IPTV, for instance. Or is it time to rework the business model to mesh with the huge and growing Internet industry by adopting some or many of its ways?

Most people in telecoms would say 'yes'.

But if that makes sense, why not go the whole hog? This is the discussion we're having today..

In particular, instead of viewing so called 'over the top', Internet services as - at best - only targets for upstream services, at worst as a bandwidth-gobbling threat, is it now time to embrace them? There could be huge advantages.

By going 'over the top' themselves telcos could use the Internet to deliver their own services, not only to their own network customers on their own networks, but..

- To their own customers on their second and third networks (corporate network at work, wireline network at home).

- And to their competitors' customers on their existing networks.


Only by going OTT can telcos enjoy the scale and market-discovery advantages tapped so well by their major emerging competitors - Microsoft, Google, Facebook and many more to come.

This is crucial viewing for ISPs and telcos as well as Internet content and service providers and, increasingly, device and component vendors of all kinds.