OTT players are a 'wake-up call' for mobile operators, says Facebook's Baigrie

"If you shut down all the OTT players, the data side of your [MNO] business falls flat," says Aidan Baigrie, client partner for sub-Saharan Africa at Facebook.

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Over-the-top (OTT) players are a "wake-up call" for mobile network operators and have been coming for a long time, said Aidan Baigrie, client partner for sub-Saharan Africa at Facebook.

Baigrie spoke at the Frontier Forum, which took place at the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) in Johannesburg. He said as controllers of the data and connectivity, MNOs need to find ways to innovate and bring content to offer consumers.

According to Baigrie, the success behind OTTs is that traditional telecoms infrastructure is so expensive, which opened up the opportunity for OTT players to come in and shine.

Without OTT players, there wouldn't be such a huge demand for the bandwidth that is fuelling the whole of Africa, he said.

"If you shut down all the OTT players, the data side of your business falls flat," said Baigrie.

In October last year, SA's operators voiced their concerns over OTT players at competition hearings hosted by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA), with some calling for regulatory intervention.

?Also speaking at the Frontier Forum, and with a completely contrary view, Chris Maroleng, group executive: corporate affairs for the MTN Group, questioned the sustainability of the model of OTTs like Facebook for African operators.

Maroleng said OTTs present mobile operators with a model that says Facebook and the other players can come on top of the infrastructure and networks built by African operators and undermine voice telephony.

"They (OTTs) benefit from the infrastructure that has been built by mobile operators," he said.

Maroleng added: "OTTs paint a picture of developing and bringing Internet when in fact they are not. You are on top of our networks.

"MNOs in Africa have had the burden of investing in Africa and we pay taxes, something that a lot of the OTTs do not do."

However, Baigrie said he doesn't buy the notion that "telcos invest in all the infrastructure and life is hard".

"I've looked at the EBDITA across loads of telcos; there were some very happy years of very high profitability," he said.

"All of us as businesses need to evolve with the landscape. Skype has been around for a long time doing what WhatsApp is doing now more effectively. This is about evolving and it's about adapting," Baigrie noted.

Facebook says it has 120 million users in Africa. In SA, the popular social network says it has more than 12 million users.