Com Hem aims for ‘complete TV environment’

Thomas Helbo

Swedish operator Com Hem will focus on developing its Com Hem Play app offering in the coming years in order to deliver a “complete TV environment”, according to CTO Thomas Helbo.

Speaking at the OTTtv World Summit yesterday, Helbo described Com Hem Play – an authenticated service that launched last year letting users access live TV and Play services from computer, phone and tablet – as “the first step”.

“We will move on and hopefully we will have a complete TV environment which is focused on continuous delivery within the next few years, but it will take some time,” said Helbo.

He described a three-year plan to move to a “technology agnostic environment” and to have a mindset where Com Hem strives to continue to improve.

“I don’t really see that there is an endgame to this, because the services will continue to evolve,” said Helbo.

“The entire e-gaming environment or universe will be part of the perception of content in the future, and we need to find a way to monetise giving access to all of that.”

Asked about Com Hem’s biggest challenges, Helbo cited a cultural change happening internally at the company.

Separately he said that everything the company is doing today is focused on “improving customer experience”, as five years ago the company’s reputation “wasn’t really that good”.

“Customers were complaining, it wasn’t a very attractive place to work. But the overall transformation of the company has led to a new and improved Com Hem which the customers actually like and the net promoter score is going up every year.”

Helbo said that Com Hem’s recent SEK 1.33 billion (€144 million) acquisition of rival Swedish pay TV operator Boxer marks “the next phase” of its transformation, “because we need to extend the footprint, we need to enable more customers to get access to the services that we provide and to be able to be more aggressively targeting the SDU (single dwelling unit) market.

Com Hem closed its acquisition of Boxer at the end of September and will continue to operate both brands.