Service Abuse More an OTT Challenge Than Credentials Sharing, Says Analyst

Credentials sharing is a problem for over-the-top services but won't necessarily stymie growth, and focusing on credentials sharing can be a wasteful diversion from the bigger problem of service abuse, Irdeto Product Director Rodrigo Fernandes blogged Tuesday. He said Netflix and Amazon are growing despite credentials sharing, and that smart rules can help mitigate service abuse. He said OTT services, in crafting those rules, need to define in their business models what reasonable use is. He said OTT operators often employ rules that cap the number of concurrent streams -- useful for differentiating price tiers and for controlling content distribution network costs per subscriber -- and employ geo blocking and device management.