After IBC 2026: What Happens Next for IPTV/OTT Operators?

IBC is over, and the industry has had enough time to recover from Amsterdam to start talking seriously about what the show actually meant.

There has already been plenty written about the biggest themes of IBC 2026: AI, content aggregation, streaming, sports, monetization, cloud, better UX, and the continuing move toward all-IP television. We wrote about many of those topics before the show, and in many ways IBC confirmed the direction we expected.

But confirmation is the easy part. The more interesting question now is what actually happens next, because there is usually a considerable distance between something appearing on an IBC stand and an operator putting it into a production service.

Looking at the conversations we had in Amsterdam, the technology being demonstrated and the wider direction of the industry, I believe the next 6–12 months will be less about adding another generation of IPTV/OTT features and much more about deciding what really creates value. That could produce some fairly important changes.

Over the next 6–12 months, we expect operator TV to move toward platform simplification, lower operating costs, practical AI, better cross-service content discovery, mixed monetization models, and more flexible infrastructure. Legacy IPTV replacement will increasingly become an economic decision rather than simply a technology upgrade, while sports will remain one of the main testing grounds for new viewing experiences. 

1. Legacy replacement becomes an economics discussion

For years, replacing an IPTV platform has largely been presented as a technology conversation. The existing system is getting old, the UX needs refreshing, new devices need to be supported, or the operator wants better OTT capabilities. All of those are valid reasons, but I think the conversation is changing.

The strongest argument for modernization over the next 12 months may simply become the cost and complexity of standing still.

Many operators are maintaining environments assembled over years from middleware, applications, DRM, CDN, encoders, recommendation systems, analytics platforms, device integrations, and various custom components. Individually, each one may work perfectly well. Collectively, they can become extremely expensive to operate.

Every new integration touches several systems, every upgrade needs coordination and every new product idea becomes a project. Internal teams spend increasing amounts of time maintaining the environment instead of improving the service. This is particularly visible among providers that have operated IPTV for many years.

The question therefore starts to change from “What new functionality will a replacement platform give us?” to “Why does operating our existing TV service still require this much money, time, and engineering effort?”

That is a much more powerful reason to modernize. I expect platform consolidation, managed services, and end-to-end architectures to become increasingly attractive not because operators suddenly want fewer technologies, but because they want fewer dependencies.

2. AI becomes less visible, which is probably a good thing

It was nearly impossible to walk through IBC 2026 without encountering AI, which is hardly surprising. But one interesting change is that the industry is slowly moving beyond simply adding the letters “AI” to every product description.

The more useful applications are becoming much more specific: better metadata, improved search, automated localization, content enrichment, highlights, personalization, operational automation, audience intelligence, sports experiences and even orchestration between different media workflows.

That is where I think AI goes next.

Viewers will probably not open their operator TV service because it has an AI button. They will open it because the search suddenly understands what they are looking for, because the recommendation is actually relevant, because a highlight from the match they missed is waiting for them, because content in another language is suddenly accessible, or simply because they spend less time searching and more time watching.

The best AI inside television may eventually be the AI the viewer barely notices.

For operators, that also changes the technology discussion. Instead of asking whether they “have AI”, the much better question becomes what problem they are actually solving with it.

3. Aggregation will have to become more intelligent

We have been talking about super aggregation for some time, but there is a danger that the term becomes meaningless.

Putting ten streaming applications on an Android TV home screen is not aggregation. It is a collection of icons.

Real aggregation starts when the viewer no longer has to understand the commercial and technical fragmentation behind those icons. Someone wanting to watch a particular film should not need to remember whether it is currently available through linear TV, catch-up, Netflix, a FAST channel, an operator VOD library, or another streaming service. They should ask one question, and the platform should help answer it.

That is why discovery may become more important than aggregation itself.

Search across services, unified metadata, recommendations across different content sources, entitlement awareness, universal watchlists, integrated billing, deep linking and a consistent identity across screens are much harder problems than installing another app. But solving them is where operators can create genuine value.

The operator does not necessarily need to own every piece of content. It needs to make navigating all that content easier.

4. Sports becomes the laboratory for the next generation of TV

Something else was difficult to miss at IBC this year: sport. And not only sports broadcasting.

The more interesting discussion was increasingly about what happens around the stream: highlights, statistics, alternative feeds, personalization, short-form content, AI-assisted interaction, watch parties, real-time translation, multiview, and second-screen experiences.

This makes sense because live sport has something much of television struggles to create: urgency. People want to watch now, they care deeply about what is happening, and they want context before the event, information during it and highlights afterwards.

That makes sport an ideal environment for experimenting with richer television experiences.

I expect many of the ideas currently being developed around sports to eventually spread into general entertainment. Personalized content rails, contextual information, automated clips, and more interactive viewing journeys will not remain sports features forever. Sport is simply where they are easiest to prove first.

5. The business model becomes more mixed

Traditional pay TV was relatively easy to understand. You bought a package, paid every month, and watched the channels included in that package.

The future is unlikely to be that tidy.

Subscription television is not disappearing, but around it we are seeing FAST channels, advertising-supported streaming, transactional content, premium sports passes, app partnerships, freemium services, and new forms of bundling.

IBC reflected that shift. Some 2026 Video Developer Reports, presented at the show, found AVOD being used by 69% of surveyed streaming developers and providers, while FAST had reached the same reported level as traditional SVOD at 54%.

The exact numbers will obviously vary enormously between markets, but the direction matters. The television product is becoming a portfolio of monetization models rather than a single subscription.

For operators, that creates an interesting opportunity because they already have something many streaming companies spend enormous amounts of money trying to obtain: an existing customer relationship. They have broadband, mobile, billing, devices, support, identity and, in some cases, millions of households.

The opportunity is to use those assets to build smarter entertainment propositions around the customer rather than selling television as an isolated product.

6. Cloud versus on-prem stops being the interesting question

For several years, a lot of technology conversations have started with the same question: cloud or on-premise?

I suspect this question becomes less interesting.

Some operators will move aggressively toward cloud infrastructure, others will continue operating significant infrastructure themselves, and many will use some combination of both. That is perfectly reasonable.

The more useful discussion is about cost, scalability, resilience, speed, control, and operational complexity. How easily can the platform scale? How quickly can something new be launched? How much control does the operator retain? How difficult is the system to operate? What does it actually cost over time?

Those questions matter far more than where a particular server happens to be located.

Technology architecture should follow the business requirement, not the other way around.

7. Operators will become less tolerant of unnecessary complexity

This may be the trend that connects everything else.

Television has become extraordinarily complicated. Content sources are fragmented, devices are fragmented, monetization models are fragmented, technology stacks are fragmented, and viewer behavior is fragmented.

At some point, adding another component to solve every new problem stops helping because it creates another problem.

That is why I expect the next phase of operator TV to include a fairly strong push toward simplification. Not necessarily one vendor doing everything, but fewer unnecessary boundaries between systems, fewer integrations that need constant maintenance, fewer separate operational environments and platforms that allow operators to change the service without beginning another six-month integration program.

In other words, the technology needs to disappear a little.

At UniqCast, we believe the next phase of operator TV will be defined less by how many features a platform can offer and more by how simply operators can deliver, manage, and evolve the service. 

The customer should experience a great TV service, while the operator should experience a manageable business. Everything underneath exists to make those two things possible.

So what will operator TV look like 12 months from now?

Probably not radically different, and that may be the most important prediction.

There will not suddenly be a completely new television industry by IBC 2027. Most households will still watch linear television, streaming services will still matter, Android TV devices will still be everywhere, and people will still complain that they cannot find anything to watch despite having access to several thousand programs.

But underneath that familiar experience, I think the priorities will shift.

Operators will pay more attention to operating cost. AI will move from demonstrations into practical workflows. Aggregation will become more focused on discovery. Sports will push personalization and interactivity forward. Advertising-supported models will become more integrated with traditional TV propositions. Platform architecture will increasingly be judged by how quickly the business can move rather than by how impressive the technology diagram looks.

Which brings me back to the question we asked before IBC: will telcos lose TV the same way they lost messaging?

After Amsterdam, I do not think the answer has become any simpler. Operators still have enormous advantages: customer relationships, connectivity, billing, local knowledge, content partnerships, and trusted brands. But those advantages do not automatically create engagement.

The next 12 months will therefore be important, not because television is about to disappear, but because operators are increasingly deciding what role they want to play in the television ecosystem that replaces the one we grew up with.

Being the network underneath it is one option. Being the place where the viewer actually starts their entertainment journey is another.

And that distinction may define far more than the next 12 months.

‍