Intel Lacked Volume For An OTT TV Play

Intel still isn’t saying whether it’s trying to sell its OTT video assets to potential suitors believed to include Verizon Communications, but company CEO Brian Krzanich has expressed why the company has backed away from launching its own virtual MSO service.

“When you go and play with the content guys, it’s all about volume. And we come at it with no background, no experience, no volume,” Krzanich told Re/code, the just-launched technology news site that includes NBCUniversal among its backers. “We were ramping from virtually zero and so what we’ve said is we are out looking for a partner that can help us scale that volume at a much quicker rate.” 

Those comment fits well what industry sources told Multichannel News last September, when word spread that Intel Media’s budding OnCue service was in jeopardy of missing its 2013 launch window and mulling a possible sale. Despite offering a handsome premium to programmers, Intel Media had a hard time securing enough distribution rights to create a viable subscription TV service. Plus it found that the “scale opportunity for a virtual MSO service is smaller than they had envisioned,” a source familiar with the project said at the time.

For the full story go to Multichannel.com.