Tigo Costa Rica: Resettling from a set-top box to a streaming app opened doors for us

For José Daniel Gómez, General Manager of Tigo Costa Rica, resettling from the set-top box to a streaming app was initially customer-driven and operators are adapting.

“This change was initially customer-driven and by listening to the customer a door was opened for us by moving to a service in the cloud, with better video compression, among other aspects,” said Gómez in his participation in the panel Super-aggregation Options on Pay-TV of Central America, which was part of NexTV Series Central America, organized by Dataxis.

This move has reduced the CAPEX or capital expenditure for Tigo with its Tigo One TV. “The important thing here is the quality of the delivery and that we operators must adapt,” said Gomez. Tigo One TV was relaunched last year, now based on Android TV. “Our core business is still connectivity, but in TV there is great potential,” he said.

Dhaval Naker, Senior Director of Marketing and Brand Communication in B2C Media at +Móvil Panamá, said that its +TV Total product was launched in the third quarter of 2020 and now manages more than 5,000 apps. “It has all the features that the audience likes and it works with wifi. It has been well received in Panama with a high level of satisfaction among customers.”

Asked about the business model with streaming apps on their platform, both Gómez and Naker indicated that they are revenue share apps that depend on whether the service is sold as an add-on or is integrated into the service. “Revenues are not very high,” Naker pointed out.

For Gómez, the goal of these agreements should be a win-win for the operator and the OTT service.

The panelists also highlighted the benefits of the Android TV system as a platform for their streaming services.

“The Android TV system allows running third-party applications. That is a great advantage. Over 54% of our users added apps outside of the box. It is what we call a content supermarket. With Android TV, a series of add-ons and other commercial capabilities are opened up,” he said.

Gómez also pointed out that “since all the functionalities have gone to the cloud with Android TV, it allows us to offer more content than a traditional box (set-top box)”. Also, the development is much faster and more cost-efficient. “This type of platform allows a faster and more efficient time to market. You are in a long-term agreement with a platform and it is reasonable to have it in this type of business.”