"We don't want to be a media comms company," says Seven

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 10 February 2010 15:17

IT Industry - Strategy

Ryan Stokes, chairman of Seven Network's vividwireless subsidiary says that Seven's foray into broadband wireless networks is not an attempt to turn Seven into "some kind of integrated media-comms company."

Delivering the keynote speech at Communications Alliance's Broadband and Beyond conference in Sydney, Stokes said the company's focus with vividwireless was to create a successful stand alone entity and it expected synergies from using the network to deliver Seven's content services to be marginal.

"We don't see the need to tie our content and carriage together. That may present an incremental value stream but our strategy is to build a leading broadband access platform...Most importantly we have invested because we believe the opportunity provides a very attractive return."

He said that the company's ownership of vividwireless would, however give it important insights an enable it to build direct one-to-one relationships with customers that have hitherto been ill-defined members of audiences"

"The investment in vividwireless provides Seven with visibility of where telecommunication services and media converge. It provides us with the opportunity to build direct relationships with consumers instead of just dealing with 'audiences'."

Also, Stokes drew a distinction between the markets of 'mobile communications' - which he said vividwireless did not intend to serve - and mobile computing.

Our target market is very distinctly 'mobile computing' not 'mobile communications'...We are firm believers that the two mobile wireless markets will evolve independent and distinct characteristics."

He attempted to draw a distinction between the two, suggesting that mobile communications was largely serving a market of handheld devices and was compromised by bandwidth constraints.

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