Broadband News

Felix Geyr is to begin sharpening Be Broadband's focus this spring on the core interests for which he believes people come to the LLU provider.

In a bid to spread its service vertically, so it does not just provide access but is involved in content provision, he is planning to provide a gaming service and is even in negotiations to provide a gambling joint venture for Be subscribers. Music and video communities are also under consideration.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, it’s all part of a three year plan,” he tells SamKnows.

“We’re going to start with gaming because we have a lot of hardcore gamers on our platform because of its speed. We’re going to be offering downloads of games and previews of new releases and tournaments in partnership with a gaming provider. We want to be a more central part of our customer’s gaming experience. We’re also talking to a gambling provider in the hope of setting up a joint venture, licences permitting, for our customers which we’re hoping will be like a social network based gambling solution.”

As if to underline the ISP’s intentions, Geyr announced just last week it has become the official broadband supplier to the UK eSports Association (UKeSA) which coordinates gaming competitions for UK gamers of all levels.

Music and video area also being considered as areas where community sites could keep Be’s customers within its own service where it can raise advertising revenue as well as potentially take a cut of any e-commerce proceeds as well as deepen brand loyalty to the specialist provider.

“The other areas of content that we will be looking to get in to are music and video,” Geyr adds.

“I don’t know for definite what we’d do with video but I think it would be more around the community aspect rather than downloads and the same for music. I think we’d be interested in becoming a destination for people that want to talk about the live music scene and maybe get together and co-write a movie script with us, or something creative like that.

“These are all just ideas we’re considering at the moment. We’re working on gaming first as it’s a core interest for our users and we have to focus. We only have 14 people on the pay roll here so we need to concentrate on one thing at a time to get it right before we launch it.”

Keeping Be Broadband a specialist

Geyr, originally from Cologne, was brought to the UK by his personal life following the sale in 2002 of a social lending site he set up in Germany. After studying for an MBA he worked for BBC Worldwide but was then attracted to what he calls the “people focus” and “cool entrepreneurial aura” at O2, following a call from a head-hunter.

When O2 bought Be Broadband in the summer of 2006 he saw his opportunity and devised a strategy which he believed showed the ISP could be run as a specialist provider alongside O2 without cannibalising a shared audience. The board liked the plan and he has run the ISP since.

“Obviously O2 is not at a grand scale yet and it will one day overtake Be in subscriber numbers,” Geyr believes.

“Be contributes a significant amount of revenue, however, and we believe it appeals to people who want a specialist ISP for speed and for gaming. A lot of our customers like being with a specialist and might not want to belong to a large brand, so we believe Be can continue to complement O2 as a distinct company.”

BT should get public money for fibre roll out

The future marks a series of interesting questions for Geyr as to how the next generation of broadband access will take shape. For the first ADSL2+ provider, speed and connection quality are always central issues which the ISP needs to be seen to taking a lead.

Whilst one would imagine for an ISP ultimately owned by Telefonica, via O2, he is adamant that mobile broadband will not be provided by Wi-Max zones but rather the mobile broadband improvements offered by the LTE (Long Term Evolution) collaboration programme being worked on by operators across the globe.

“Be is not that likely to go down the mobile route because our users may not be satisfied with mobile, they’re more likely to want the speed and consistency of fibre in the long term,” he says.

“Having said that when our subscribers are on the move we believe that LTE will be the way forward and I don’t think there are many people who seriously still think it will be overshadowed by Wi-Max.”

However, when it comes to who should provide this high speed fibre network Geyr reveals his position has recently changed and led him to a conclusion many will find surprising.

“I was against public money going to BT, or another provider, to roll out a national fibre network but I think now we’re in a time of special circumstances,” he says.

“We’re in a recession and I think you need to treat the next year or so as a special time when, as a one-off, you could allow public money to go to BT to roll out the fibre network the country needs and which would then of course be opened up for wholesale. I didn’t have this opinion before the recession but I think special times call for special measures.”