London, 13 November 2012 – The OTTtv World Summit, the leading global event in the OTT community, successfully returned last week as the conference and exhibition attracted over 400 attendees. The event witnessed an increase on last year’s numbers and fuelled debate on whether Telcos should build, buy or partner in order to generate new revenues and monetisation opportunities surrounding OTTtv and video services.

With an impressive speaker line-up, visitors and delegates were given the opportunity to listen to major industry players, including Spencer Stephens, CTO at Sony Pictures Entertainment; Ed Lee, VP of Content Acquisition at Roku; and Nicolas Bry, SVP Digital at Orange Vallee.

Day one saw Gerry O’Sullivan, SVP of Global Entertainment and Television at Deutsche Telekom, take to the stage, sharing how his company has shifted from a Telco to a media centric OTT player. With 4.5 million Deutsche Telekom TV subscribers across 10 countries, O’Sullivan emphasised that reach is equally important as content, highlighting that OTT players need to be included within the traditional TV and video ecosystem. O’Sullivan also used the event to reveal that Deutsche Telekom is moving ahead with its plan to launch multiscreen services, initially in Germany, and also spoke about the launch of Deutsche Telekom’s app store on its Entertain IPTV platform, enabling OTT providers to come to the platform and deliver their services to the company’s IPTV subscribers.

Verizon’s Head of Content Strategy and Acquisitions Patricia Lynch, gave an insightful presentation that focused on the route to monetisation through multiscreen engagement, stressing the vital role of content providers and how working together can successfully provide a reliable service to end-users. Lynch’s message was supported by Johnan Gӧrsjӧ, Director of Product Management at Agama Technologies, who outlined the importance of fulfilling customer expectations through service quality and assurance.

Heather Martin, Director of Interaction Design at Smart Design, spoke about redefining the Smart TV paradigm and comments: "There have been a lot of fascinating talks about all the potential in the world of OTT, but one of the recurring themes has been the need for a great user experience. At Smart Design that is exactly our message. Right now, there is so much choice of content and means of consuming that content. The big opportunity is to leverage technology to create a simplified personal experience that works across devices."

Day two of the event was equally exciting with Patrica Slupowski, VP of Digital Innovation and Communities at Orange-France Telecom, and Jason Titus, CTO of Shazam, both providing keynote addresses. Slupowski provided an update on the development of Orange’s multiscreen check-in service, while Titus shared how Shazam uses its audio recognition technology to power second-screen engagement, telling the audience: “Smartphones are becoming the norm for interacting with the TV. We have an opportunity to take advantage of that screen to do interesting things but you need to be thinking about use cases – why are people going to use it? One problem is that people do things because they can be done, not because people want use them.”

This year’s event also saw an array of stimulating activity from exhibitors, which included Stream Group which provided live presentations of its range of multiscreen solutions; Ineoquest which shared and demonstrated its latest video quality and service assurance technologies; and Appear TV which showcased its head-end solutions for broadcast and IP network video delivery.

Following the huge success of this year’s event, Informa Telecoms & Media can confirm that OTTtv World Summit will return to the Thistle Marble Arch in London in 2013. The dates for next year are 19 – 21 November. For further information, visit http://ottworldsummit.com/ or follow @OTTtv to gain sneak previews ahead of 2013’s conference and exhibition.