Get a group of telecom industry experts together to talk about the marketing of triple-play service bundles, and the conversation quickly moves beyond the ephemeral aspects of pricing and packaging into the finer details of individual customer experience.

At least that's what happened when Telephony joined a conference bridge last week to get a preview of “Marketing the Triple or Quad Play: Adding Value and Service to the Customer Relationship — Bundling that Works!” — a panel session this week at the Digital Hollywood conference, co-located with NXTcomm in Chicago. That panel is moderated by Meredith Flynn-Ripley, CEO of Integra5, and features Vince Vittore, senior analyst at the Yankee Group (and a former Telephony editor); Fred Diblasio, vice president of content and enhanced services for Canadian carrier Telus; Ray Sokola, chief technology officer of Motorola Connected Home; Matt Cuson, vice president of market for Minerva Networks; and Stuart Taylor, senior director of Internet business solutions in the service provider consulting group for Cisco Systems.

The early notion about marketing triple-play service bundles was that the concept of a bundle for a discount price over the cost of each individual service was the only hook a company needed. But as Flynn-Ripley said, “Service providers want to move beyond the bundle to the customer experience. They are waking up to the idea that they can't just let the triple play be about price.”

The implicit understanding is that competitors won't let price be the dominant factor, but, in addition, that customers won't be satisfied merely by a discount.

“The next generation of the triple play is about customer solutions centered on the idea of the connected life: the ability to have a central repository of content that can be connected to in a variety of ways,” Taylor said. He added that wireline telcos and cable TV companies appear to be the service providers in the best position with customers to move into this next generation, but that Internet players like Google, with their understanding of on-demand content, are a serious threat.

“Those who figure out to play the game more Google-like will benefit,” Sokola added, but he also said telcos cannot stray far from their traditional focus on quality. While a consumer might accept a triple-play package in which the quality of one service lags behind the rest, “you can have one that's too much weaker,” he said.

Yet service providers won't necessarily get to define bundles and lead with their strongest offerings. Vittore noted that the definition of what constitutes a triple-play or quad-play bundle will be decided by consumers and will increasingly vary by individual consumer and household. “My bundle will be much different than someone's who is just coming out of college,” he said. “If it's a data-centric bundle, telcos may have an advantage, but if it's an entertainment-centric bundle, it will be cable companies.”

Cuson concluded, “The business model remains the challenge for service providers: to see how long they can invest in future ideas about bundled services without profiting.”

In other words, packaging triple- and quad-play bundles to satisfy the individual consumer experience needs to produce real financial return — or else it may remain more concept than reality.