Netgem targets LATAM opportunities


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Juan Fernandez Gonzalez

| 06 March 2016




Building on its solid partnership with Mexico's Totalplay, French set-top box (STB) provider Netgem is seeking to open new markets in Latin America.



netgemIt is also developing new business areas via its operation with Grupo Salinas's fibre-based platform. These include platform monitoring, network mapping and cost reduction.

“For Netgem, difficult markets are usually good. If a company is always growing, it doesn't want to change anything. But in unstable markets, companies look for differentiating offers and cost savings solutions,” pointed out Alain Motard, sales director for Latin America at Netgem, speaking to Television Hispana. “It's true Latin America's market is difficult right now, but this means opportunities for an experienced company like us.”

However, it doesn't look like a new operation will be launched during 2016. While catering for the growing demand of Totalplay, Grupos Salinas's telecom division Azteca has built a huge fibre network across Colombia, on which it intended, initially, to launch an IPTV service of which Netgem would be a partner. But the project has been beset with delays due to, among other things, the operation's low average revenue per users (ARPU) and the lack of real demand.

Netgem is considering operations in other Latin American markets, such as Brazil, but no concrete agreements have been signed yet. For the moment, it will keep working on Totalplay, which is acting like a lab for integrating telecom services into a single platform. In addition to using STB to have efficient control over the IP network, the platform integrates broadcast TV with IPTV and HTML5 over-the-top (OTT) content – it added Netflix last summer – delivering multi-screen, TV on-the-go and advanced capabilities such as network PVR, time-shift and catch-up.