UK: Wildanet joins fibreco multiplay push with TiVo

South west England fibreco Wildanet has advanced its multiplay ambitions with a TV add-on enabled via a market-first tie-up with TiVo.

“ We’ve been looking for the right time, and the right proposition, to enter the TV market. ”

Simon Hughes, Wildanet’s Chief Commercial Officer, talking to TelcoTitans ahead of launch.

Having weighed a step into TV for around a year, Hughes considers the time right, and the fast-growing Freely TV platform accessed via TiVo’s streaming platform to fit the requirement.

For £8.99 a month over 24 months, the operator will be providing a plug-and-play set-top box, granting access to free live and catch-up TV as well as mainstream and specialist streaming video, gaming and other content apps.

Backed by the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV through joint venture Everyone TV, Freely is the UK’s streamed successor to over-the-air Freeview and satellite Freesat. It is positioned as a ‘next era’ national free-to-air platform currently carrying over 70 live television channels with further additions upcoming.

The move makes Wildanet the first player to bring the eponymous TiVo-powered solution to the UK broadband market. Owned by California-based entertainment tech provider Xperi since 2020, TiVo was among the first to achieve Freely hardware certification two years ago, initially integrated into televisions and now also set-top boxes.

As Everyone TV Chief Executive Jonathan Thompson put it in related comments shared with TelcoTitans, Freely “removes much of the complexity historically associated with TV distribution, while giving operators a credible way to enhance broadband offerings with a service viewers want”.

“ The next phase of TV will be defined not just by the infrastructure that delivers it, but by the services, experiences and partnerships built on top of that infrastructure. The launch of Powered by TiVo devices, with Freely built-in, and distributed through altnets, is a good example of how these elements can come together. ”

Jonathan Thompson, Chief Executive, Everyone TV.

Tuning into changing customer demand…

TV joins IP-based voice in Wildanet’s multiplay product line-up as the altnet looks to better compete on multiple fronts while keeping focused on the customer in its predominantly rural footprint.

An early soft-launch generated a positive reception, Hughes said, following several months of hearing from customers looking for a provider that can provide the same level of ease-of-use, ease-of-install , pricing, and performance on the TV front as Wildanet boasts in full-fibre.

“ The market for broadband services is evolving: it’s becoming ever more competitive, ever more sophisticated… As time has evolved — and we see it in different sectors of our lives — expectations increase in terms of completeness of portfolio, usability, value, and flexibility. What might have been acceptable for Wildanet in 2023 is not necessarily where we need to be in 2026. What we need to offer is what our customers are expecting from us, and increasingly in our customer base they ask about the availability of a TV service. ”

Hughes.

Wildanet landed on the TiVo-powered Freely product after determining priorities for a TV launch. Hughes said this translated to: internet-based; easy to use and install; and “future proof”. This means it can be “slipstreamed” into Wildanet’s existing provisioning, billing, and marketing processes, so the service provider can be “confident that it’s going to work”.

Wildanet: different, better

Focused on Cornwall and Devon, Wildanet serves a somewhat unique demographic split between locals, second-home owners, short-term holidaymakers, and the hundreds of thousands of year-round residents that traverse its footprint.

“A product like this is relevant for the holiday months and the holidaymakers, but we’ve got a big market to serve year-round as well”, Hughes said. How the service will be marketed to landlords has still to be clarified, with the CCO cognisant that “we need to talk to the owner of the property as much as the user”. He noted that “we’re starting off from almost zero on this, so we’ve got to adapt”.

Hughes is clear that the launch is a genuine differentiator rather than a me-too bolt-on. “The ability to offer Freely with TiVo is not available, as I understand it, from any of the national providers, so we are genuinely differentiated as opposed to offering a me-too telco TV product”, said Hughes.

“ We already position ourselves as providing high-quality products as part of our proposition and, therefore, the TiVo products, with the content it provides, fits into that and it’s a natural extension… It just reinforces Wildanet as a quality provider with quality products and propositions. ”

Simon Hughes, Chief Commercial Officer, Wildanet

Hughes considers Wildanet well equipped to hold its own against the broadband market’s historic brands, including building to postcodes where larger players have yet to venture, and claiming superior service in areas where they go head-to-head. “We’re doing that successfully… we can deliver some dramatic savings at the same time as increasing their speeds, so we certainly offer significant value, and we can extend that into voice and TV”, Hughes said.

In this vein, Wildanet’s network is built on latest-generation XGS-PON, and packaged with up-to-2Gbps symmetric speeds. A 1Gbps service is priced at £30 a month, pitched as part of a portfolio with “some of the best prices in the country for that speed, certainly for rural Britain”, with IP voice a popular £10 monthly add-on.

“ I think we’re known for great value, and we can apply that to TV as much as we can apply it to broadband and voice. ”

Hughes.

What next?

Along with TV, mobile is the other notable adjacency some fibre altnet peers are eying, most recently London’s Community Fibre, with barriers to MVNO entry said to have fallen sharply.

Wildanet has made no such move yet, but its TV launch suggests a service provider increasingly comfortable adding to its stack rather than entrenching a single pipe.

B2B, public sector, and wholesale are also notable growth routes for the sector, with Wildanet already a proud enabler of local enterprise and community.

Whatever the future holds in store, Hughes is clear that the TV move is a step in a longer story for the operator rather than an end point.

“We’re learning and we’re evolving. There’s a long journey for Wildanet to go on, but this is one part of that journey and a continuation of where we want it to be. Expect more from us: this is the latest instalment in the journey.” 

Thompson.