Is Pay TV becoming a wholesale business?

The gap between broadband and Pay TV is getting broader in Latin America. While the growth of internet users has no ceiling, that of linear video has been gradually decreasing. Between both businesses, there is already a difference of 44.3 million customers: an ocean. User interest may be lacking, but now, the fastest-growing operators do not always offer linear television. This is a strategic decision. Fiber is the engine of broadband growth in Latin America, already accumulating 55% of access, but it is a phenomenon pushed by small and medium-sized companies. For them, TV is a complex business, with low margins. There lies the opportunity of OTT Pay TV which offers TV solutions for third parties. Dataxis estimates that this provider profile, a broadband operator granting access to OTT Apps has already implemented partnerships that give it potential access to 3.5 million broadband accesses. At their start, wholesale solutions first were an attractive solution for small operators that couldn’t afford the jump to interactive TV platforms. Several companies have achieved specific developments in the field. Colsecor (with its Sensa brand), and Rocstar, among others, have gained several dozen companies as wholesale clients over time. Some individual operators also tried to market their in-house platforms after developing them for their own use initially. Currently, DirecTV and Zapping TV are the two players that have managed to attract medium-scale providers. DGO concentrates 15% of DirecTV's customers DirecTV Latin America, part of the Vrio group, is the largest OTT pay TV operator in Latin America. As of 2022, it counted around 1.43 million subscribers under its DGo OTT platform. Although that technological option had been available since 2018, the mass of customers subscribing to it accelerated from 2020. Streaming TV customers managed to sustain the fall in the mass of DTH users. Although DirecTV started investing in its fiber and wireless network developments, it is still in the initial development phase. Thus, DGO can operate over any network. The service is not tied to a Set-Top Box and runs as an application on different types of devices. This type of operation, which means entering a high diversity of networks, is an unusual scheme in the region, where the "one network, one operator" scheme still predominates. DirecTV has several distributors in different countries. In general terms, it has set its sights on urban, mid-range fiber optic operators. The partnering ISPs give DirecTV a potential reach of over 2.05 million fixed access customers. There are other examples of operators selling a solution under their own brand. Red Intercable is selling Flow, Telecom Argentina's interactive TV solution. Red Intercable offers services to multiple operators, which together constitute the fourth largest operator in the country in terms...