Stuart Corner
Monday, 16 June 2008 10:40
Opinion and Analysis
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BigPond head honcho Justin Milne has delivered the most convincing picture I have yet seen of Telstra's media comms abilities and ambitions and it reinforces what I have been saying for years: Telstra is uniquely positioned because it is such a powerful player in so many overlapping, and converging, technologies, services and markets.
Milne was addressing the 55th International Advertising Festival in Cannes. Some of what he said was new, some not, but the bringing together was impressive, and for Telstra's competitors, I suspect more than a little frightening.
Milne opened with a video. I was not there so I don't know what was in it. The significant thing is that, as Milne said: "the presentation was not outsourced. It was produced in-house by our own people in our own studios. It might seem strange that a telco has that capability. But it's an example of the things you need to be good at – if you're going to become a 'media-comms' company."
Milne defined a media comms company as one that has the content, the networks to distribute it and the intelligent systems needed to deliver the right content to the right customer at just the right moment. Telstra has all these attributes in spades, and while its' debatable whether a media-comms company needs to have its own studios, it's yet another example of just how all pervasive Telstra has become.
BigPond of course is Australlia's largest ISP (by now it has probably passed the 50 percent retail share mark (a milestone that
Milne foreshadowed earlier this year . But also, thanks to its exclusive sport, movies, music and games content it is according to Milne, one of Australia's biggest online publishers. Not only that, it is a not inconsiderable live broadcaster. "In sport, we have exclusive new media rights for three of the country's most popular sports. We broadcast live events, highlights packages, extensive statistics and all the information demanded by sports fans. We operate three web TV channels including one that, on weekends, broadcasts 18 hours live from our own studios" Milne said.
Telstra is also the largest Australian-owned music download site. "We regularly have online or mobile exclusives...We have another web TV channel broadcasting music videos 24/7. And we produce and broadcast a series of weekly live concerts featuring Australia's best known musicians," Milne said.
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