That's a very good question
@Parcels There are many factors that come into play and you touched on a couple of them.
In this case, lacking any official details of the deal, I can only formulate an opinion based on what I see. I will list just a few observations first:
1. There was no statement made by Indosat executives, not on the contract nor on the WC transmission (compare with Telekomsel/Accedo or Smartfren/KlixTV who had quotes from execs)
2. The 'promotion' (I hesitate to use that word) of iStream on the Indosat IM3 banner is putting it on the same footing as Spotify, YouTube and iflix. If that was my own product, I would have promoted it a lot more aggressively (unless they are waiting post WC to do so).
3. All the work done to date has not led to any revenue, otherwise it would have been announced (or at least hinted at).
That leads me to believe (and this is just my opinion) that the deal with Indosat is based on TV2U providing a white-label service at little or no cost to Indosat (hence their low involvement in promoting it) and any revenue generated from subscriptions would be shared between the two.
That kind of deal makes sense to me, there is a lot of positive in it. TV2U doesn't have any live customer today and they need one to establish credibility. Indosat needs an OTT solution but seeing the Ooredoo TV failure, they are twice as careful and would hesitate 'buying' a new platform that hasn't been deployed before. Therefore, such a deal helps both companies, TV2U gets a major customer and has an opportunity to deploy its technology, and Indosat gets an OTT solution with little risk, if any. In fact, for TV2U this represents a new opportunity, that of demonstrating that it can operate a 'managed OTT service' providing a white-label solution for future customers unable or unwilling to implement their own OTT platform.
If my reading is correct, the good news is that TV2U would make more money from subscriptions than initially thought (Indosat is just the carrier and would get a small part of the revenue, call it a fee, as they didn't invest much). The bad news (if one wants to call it that) is that this won't happen during the World Cup and not until decent content is available on the iStream platform, allowing for ongoing, stable subscriptions, hence revenue. What and how content will be acquired is also something worth considering.
That would explain (in my opinion) why Indosat chose TV2U, because TV2U made them a compelling offer at little, if any, cost/risk to them. If things go south Indosat will not risk much. If things go well, Indosat will progressively take a more active role in the promotion of the service. Not only that, but if at some point Indosat, or Ooredoo as a group, sees this as a strategic OTT opportunity, the nature of the deal could change (can go as far as a massive investment in TV2U). Remember that Ooredoo are unhappy with Ooredoo TV's performance and with their current content suppliers. They are now dealing with OTT solutions on an opportunistic market-by-market basis, not as a corporate solution (which Ooredoo TV was supposed to be).
Personally, I believe this 'managed OTT service' represents a bigger opportunity (and revenue) for TV2U than running after small operators, at great cost and marketing effort. Actually, I wish they had started with this 2 years ago (including SOL) because they had that platform sitting in Malaysia with no customers. TV2U can also have their own global content (i.e. other than national), like VOD with Vonetize (if that deal progressed). Content that they can make available immediately to any new white-label customer. This is not a crazy idea, because this is exactly what they wanted to do with PGASCOM for smaller operators in Indonesia. This allows them now to take it beyond Indonesia and no third-party to deal with.
Ultimately it's a matter of patience and looking for long-term potential rather than short-term speculative gain based on the WC (which was unrealistic anyway). I agree with you, you can be comfortable with your investment. That doesn't stop you from selling on a high and buying on a low and increase your stake, if you wanted of course
Just my opinion as I stated.
As for Optus, this is not a unique case. Other networks around the world today are experiencing similar issues (as they did on many previous occasions). The causes can be diverse, all it take is one component in the network to saturate or fail and the effect is felt immediately. It can be a saturated land network, saturated mobile antennas, under-dimensioned or module failure in the streaming platform, any of many factors can affect the quality of the transmission, including the mobile itself. The platform can be brilliant but when you have a crappy network or a saturated antenna you will still suffer. Customers don't know or care what is causing the problem, so they blame the label, Optus.
