WindMobileis a wireless company in the news recently inCanada. They are a relatively new mobile company looking to offer bundles – home phone, wireless, internet and over the top (OTT) programming for mobiles. In Canada the major telecommunications providers (Telus,Belland Rogers) are more focused on traditional broadcasting (Telus is reselling the Bell Satellite offering). An example of a well-known over the top service is Netflix.

The OTT service is aiming to have international sports, entertainment and news available to Canadians. In a way, this reminds me of how Rogers began their programming, aiming at multicultural clientele. Wind, rather than making their services available just for television sets they are aiming at mobile devices and internet enabled TVs (the future of broadcasting) and leaving the existing broadcasting model to the incumbents. Part of this is the higher costs for establishing a traditional broadcasting business model and part of this is envisioning where technology and business models are going. AlthoughRogersandBellare working on capturing rights to live events they are not focusing on OTT or broadcasting on mobile devices; they recognize that the future of broadcasting is going to be live events that people will want to see as they are happening, such as sporting events, anywhere they are.

For the incumbents to be truly innovative do they have to change focus completely onto OTT? Not as long as they continue to work on the OTT services (and rights for broadcasting on the newer platforms); they most likely won’t be first to market but if they see the market picking up they will be fast followers.