Telcos going over-the-top: high risk or high time?

That seemed to be the consensus of opinion yesterday when Telecom TV held its latest Main Agenda Live programme in London.

'The Rise of the Open Telco: is it time to go over-the-top?' addressed the idea that telcos were beginning to adopt openness in terms of the way they interacted with other - especially Internet-based - service providers. It also aimed to test the idea that telcos would bow to the inevitable and introduce their own 'over-the-top' Internet services in some areas as and when such an approach could further their competitive objectives - perhaps in partnership with existing successful OTT players.

While this would be a huge break with the past (and in some cases the rhetoric of the present) it was presented to the panel as something which was likely to start happening in the medium term as telcos buddied up to content providers and - as important - had to start responding to their users' multi-screen demands.

The hour-long live panel session was streamed across the Internet (appropriately enough, 'over-the-top' as always) and is now available for on-demand viewing.

According to one of the invited panel members, Martin Creaner, COO and president of the TeleManagement Forum, "I think there is a cultural change that'll be needed inside telcos," says Creaner.