Swisscom’s Blue SuperMax points to super-aggregation future

Super-aggregation “helps customers who don’t want to mess around with too many apps,” according to Malte Probst, chief product officer, fiction, Blue Entertainment at Swisscom, with offers such as Swisscom’s recent launch of Blue SuperMax, an offering comprising Disney+, Paramount+ and Sky Cinema in a single bundle.

Following successful negotiations with its content partners, Swisscom successfully integrated Disney+ and Paramount+ into the Blue SuperMax subscription with Sky Cinema for CHF34.90 a month, retiring the previous Blue Max offering that retailed for CHF19.90.

The expanded service includes additional services, such as Blue Action, Blue Stars, Blue Retro, WBtv Film and Kinowelt.

Probst, speaking at the Connected TV World Summit in London today, said that the level of integration possible with content app providers varies according to content provider, said Probst. With Disney, those signing up for the Swisscom service have their existing Disney+ subscription paused, which he said was a workable solution. Probst said that offering a sizeable discount for multiple apps attracted customers.

The operator has changed its offering with Netflix so that Swisscom provides customer services for Netflix with sign-up via Swisscom’s offers and promotions from the Netflix app, which he said had resulted in a massive uptick in take-up.

The integration of Netflix had secured the support of the streaming giant thanks to Swisscom’s ability to innovate with a high degree of confidence, said Probst.

“We wanted to make it easier for fiction aficionados by reducing the price point,” he said.

He said that integrating Netflix had been complex because the streamer already had a huge subscriber base.

He said that Swisscom has completed single sign-on with Netflix, and is working on it with Disney and others, he said.

Probst said that Swisscom was in talks with multiple content providers to integrate them more completely. However, he said, the need for mutually acceptable relationships with content providers meant that operators needed to “find a middle ground” with them.