Harry Wang, Director of Health and Mobile Product Research at Parks Associates shares his thoughts on new telecom services that capitalize on broadband connectivity. Harry believes that telcos do have several opportunities to diversify into new markets.

1. Telco App Stores
These would enable telcos to distribute content across mutliple end user platforms. Wholesale Application Community (WAC) – a global mobile carriers’ initiative to offer app purchases no matter what device platform or mobile carrier that a consumer uses.

2. Home based Services
Home entertainment (video, audio, game playing, etc), home security monitoring, energy controls, and personal emergency response were cited as some possibities.

3. On line TV packages that complement telco broadcast video (IPTV or RF) and VoD
The telco would procure the content from a 3rd party and make it available over their triple play delivery network. The STB would play the OTT videos along with broadcast and VoD on TVs and other user devices/platforms.

4. Becoming 4G- MVNOs
Telcos (and MSOs) that don’t have their own 4G network could buy pieces of it wholesale from a third party provider. This would help telcos that currently don’t have any wireless offerings for consumers or the mobile workforce.

5. Personal Cloud for consumers
Assuming the telcos can learn and understand what makes a good cloud experience for consumers, they could provide individual “personal clouds” that store the customers data, electronic documents, music collections, downloaded videos, photo albums, etc.

6. Commercial Services for SMBs
These would encompass service bundles that include both fixed and mobile offerings. SMB customer needs will determine the precise ones which are deployed.

Parks Associates VP & Principal Analyst Kurt Scherf is very optimistic about premium technical support services to be offered by skilled telcos. It will be a broadband-provided service that will help to generate positive cashflow for the broadband service provider, create new revenue streams, and help to reduce incoming customer support phone calls when people have something typically considered “out-of-scope” such as a virus infection on their home computer. Revenues from premium technical support services are projected to grow from $1.5 billion in 2011 to $4.8 billion in 2011.