London, 4 October 2012 – With the number of people viewing online video via connected devices predicted to leap to 380 million globally by 2015*, OTTtv is at the forefront of connected entertainment and is undoubtedly an industry with huge potential. This provides the setting for this year’s OTTtv World Summit, where industry heavyweights Gerry O’Sullivan, SVP of Global TV and Entertainment at Deutsche Telekom, and Terry Denson, VP of Content and Acquisition at Verizon, will explore and debate whether telcos should build, buy or partner, in order to respond to this rapidly growing industry.

With traditional telephony revenues under pressure from OTT services, telcos recognise that they can evolve their business to occupy key parts of the value chain by building or buying services, or partnering with OTT providers in areas where they do not have a core competence. This year’s conference and exhibition includes the OTT Service Partnership Workshop, which will explore the monetisation opportunities surrounding OTTtv and video services, and the importance of partners and partner platforms in enabling telcos to generate revenues from new services.

Many collaborations are focused on bringing new revenue-generating services, for example, Belgacom has entered into a strategic partnership with Awingu in Belgium to offer enterprise cloud services, while KT has formed a partnership with Microsoft in South Korea to offer Microsoft 365 to its business customers. Further case studies such as these will be included in the day-long interactive Service Partner Workshop, which will be chaired by Clemens Schwaiger, Global Head of Digital Media Strategies at Arthur D. Little, and will highlight how OTT is not a disruptive threat, but instead an innovative opportunity.

Giles Cottle, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, says: “The assumption that there is no money in OTT is simply no longer the case. Ubiquitous broadband, OTT content and connected devices are re-inventing how, where and from whom consumers get their video content. Those that fail to innovate can expect to be disrupted sooner rather than later.”

2012’s event programme also includes key note presentations and panel discussions with C-level representatives from the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Skype, Du, Zeebox, Netflix, Orange-France Telecom, Telefonica, Vodafone Group, Sky Deutschland and Sony Pictures Entertainment. There is also a Multiplatform Focus Day and HTML 5 Workshop, which will be Chaired by Google’s Senior Business Product Manager, Matt Frost.

Jon Sonsteby, Senior Director of Business Development at Ericsson, comments on last year’s event: “Good mix to include OTT providers and service providers sharing real world examples.”

The conference and exhibition will take place at Thistle Marble Arch Hotel, London, on 5 – 8 November 2012. To view the full event programme and register for OTTtv World Summit, please visit http://ottworldsummit.com or call  +44 (0) 20 7017 5506. Alternatively, keep up to date with event news on Twitter @OTTTV.