We talk a lot about the cable industry within the United States, but what about the trends and challenges going on in regions beyond the U.S.? I recently spoke with German Iaryczower, senior vice president of sales at ARRIS for the Caribbean and Latin America regions to find out a little bit about the work they are doing with cable operators in the region and how their market differs from ours in the United States.
ARRIS provides cable operators with high-speed data, video and telephony systems for homes and businesses, but in the Latin American market, the state of the economy creates a fork in the road for a lot of cable companies, as technology is often more expensive for service providers to acquire. Technology like DOCSIS and video networks are utilized in Latin America in the same way that they are in the U.S., but Latin America lags a bit behind the U.S. in terms of deploying new technology.
The economy in Latin America affects the ability for consumers to spend, Iaryczower explains, so people stay at home. This might actually be a good thing though, because people at home want entertainment. “We have recently seen incredible growth in broadband services,” says Iaryczower, in some cases as high as 40 percent. He adds that broadband and video penetration have surged into the double digits over the past five years, though the service penetration rate is much lower than in the U.S., and this is a great opportunity for high growth.
Overall, there aren’t big differences in content-watching habits between U.S. and Latin American audiences, says Iaryczower. Latin American audiences use the TV as their primary means of consuming content. The family and friendship-oriented culture of the region might play into how much TV people watch. “The TV is still important for a lot of consumers to get together with family and friends for sporting events or different shows,” he explains.
There is also a large community in Latin America that has taken on OTT content like Netflix, and in that respect, the market is very much like the U.S. market. “People are adapting to and adopting new ways of consuming entertainment, and they want to take that content on the go,” says Iaryczower.
Earlier this year, ARRIS launched its Consumer Entertainment Index (CEI) survey sent to 19,000 consumers, which involved 19 countries including the U.S. and Latin American countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Customers were asked about how they interact with their television content, what do they want to see, and what challenges do they face with watching television. Notably, 72 percent of respondents said they considered it important to be able to download their content to a device so they could watch it while on the go without an Internet connection. This is a challenge in Latin America, with public Wi-Fi not being as prevalent as it is in the U.S. Costs are very high when it comes to streaming outside the home, which brings us to another finding: Twenty-seven percent responded that they don’t watch TV on-the-go because of data costs.
Iaryczower explains that there’s been a lot of focus from service providers over the past three years to deploy public Wi-Fi in the region. “It’s common to find Wi-Fi in a restaurant now, but there’s still an opportunity there for service providers to give customers the ability to leave the home and still connect.”
We look forward to seeing more developments in the region in the years ahead as connectivity becomes a staple inside and outside of the home.