NetUno: The challenge is that households consume more data

Gilbert Minionis, CEO at NetUno Venezuela, explained the journey of the company during the panel The transformation of Latin American cable operators at NEXTV CEO LatAm.

“From the beginning we always saw ourselves as a data company, making the transition to what we are today was very easy. We were the first in many things, including offering broadband almost 20 years ago. We were pioneers in ISP and were alone in that space for many years. Now 60 new companies have been created as ISPs,” he said.

The panel also included André Costa, CEO, Use Telecom; Sergio Andrés Restrepo Valderrama, CEO, Cable Mio and Rohit Mehra, VP of Sales for the Americas of Nagra.

Between outsourcing a streaming platform and creating one from scratch, “scale is what is going to make the difference”, Minionis said. “For those of a larger dimension and with more muscle, it will be more feasible to put together the platform. The challenge is to maintain it, which is very convenient when you outsource it.”

Minionis highlighted that another half, is to add the hyper-local channel over those platforms to have great fidelity. “A lot of operators had that localism flavor before. We have tried to keep local care centers. Those kinds of actions are what make customers stay. It is more feasible to do it for the small ones than for a large one. In addition to providing a lot of speed to households, we need more data consumption there. That is the challenge.”

For his part, Restrepo of Cable Mio commented that one of the problems in Colombia is that the government has facilitated the granting of licenses to ISPs, which has helped bring the Internet to remote places, “but has also created a cannibalization.”

He added that many more national and government policies are needed “to prevent the piracy that is hurting us.”

While Mehra of Nagra mentioned the importance of localization and innovation. “Broadband is the holy grail and the consumer gets freedom of choice.”