A recent article by John Dillon for Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) suggests that not only can operators monetize multimedia services by selectively exposing high value network capabilities, but service provider network assets offer quantifiable value to third-party developers.

"Service provider returns, previously provided by investments in communications and services, are diminishing," Dillon notes, since "an increase in traffic volume driven by multimedia consumption and direct-to-consumer application services is eroding service provider value."

Service providers can increase their influence on the content delivery value chain, Dillon thinks, by "adding unique value to it." Specifically, he sees marketing opportunities in a few areas.

Multimedia content delivery, such as on-demand and catch-up TV, and video on demand. Screen Digest reports that in the pay-TV sector, "the upgrade of the U.S. cable companies' networks to enable homes to on-demand, combined with migration of customers from analogue to digital services will see the transactional VoD market increase in value in North America to $3 billion by 2014."

Mobile applications. Since 2007, Dillon notes, "the iPhone (News - Alert) and other smartphone platforms have created a new application market forecasted to explode to $25 billion by 2014."

To connect to these potential revenue streams, he says, service providers "need to understand the network capabilities required to participate in the multimedia content delivery value chain. With the right tools, services and expertise, they can unlock the network assets to make it happen."

Specifically, Dillon sees service providers having network assets that offer "a quantifiable value to third parties looking to provide consumers services," assets which can be used "to monetize the massive streams of content and application services that traverse the network."

These assets of interest to third parties include communications capability, subscriber usage, consumption preferences, location information, converged payment and billing preferences, device management and configuration and content formatting for multiple screens, just to mention a few, along with converged service and subscriber data management with interactivity across screens and devices and recommendation and subscriber intelligence to target consumers with relevant content and interactive advertising.

"Securely exposing control assets to content providers and third-party application developers enables service providers to offer high value differentiated services to multimedia companies and application developer communities," Dillon concludes.