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before joining the telecoms industry a decade ago, starting with the innovative Dutch cable company Ziggo.

“When I joined the group in 2015 – when Liberty Global acquired Ziggo – Liberty Global was very much a traditional cable company,” he comments. “At that time, we were active in over 12 markets in Europe and also in Latin America. Today, we are focused on fewer markets, but we are a fixed mobile converged player and have fully integrated broadband, video and mobile into these companies.”

As Vervoort explains, Liberty Global is combining the best broadband and mobile networks under brands such as Virgin Media-O2 in the UK, VodafoneZiggo in The Netherlands, Telenet in Belgium, Sunrise in Switzerland, Virgin Media in Ireland, and UPC in Slovakia, creating what he describes as National Champions.

“In the markets where we are active, we like to think of ourselves as National Champions,” he continues. “We are either the number one or two player in those markets in which we are active. Our portfolio and our markets have changed quite a bit – you could say that, nowadays, we are as much a mobile company as a fixed company.”

Pieter Vervoort

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTS

COMPANY: LIBERTY GLOBAL

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: AMSTERDAM

Responsible for the complete current and future Entertainment Products portfolio management of Liberty Global. The product portfolio aims to deliver a full, consistent and aggregated entertainment experience across several set top boxes and other relevant platforms for our consumers both in and out of the home.

Vervoort has been with Liberty Global since 2015, when he joined Liberty as VP Connectivity Products. Before that, he had been at Ziggo since 2012 as an executive leading its product portfolio & innovation for connectivity, entertainment, digital & programming. Prior to his tenure in telecom, he worked for 17 years with Philips in various executive international roles in finance, sales, marketing, product strategy and business management for the Philips TV group.

Liberty Global: Transforming the world of entertainment

Transforming the world of entertainment

Rather than a sole emphasis on fixed-mobile convergence and broadband packages, Liberty Global instead offers an integrated entertainment experience to consumers, with what it describes as the superaggregation of multiple services. Central to this strategy, Vervoort explains, is providing consumers with one place where they can find all of their personal content, all served in a very intuitive manner.

Its latest product, the Horizon 4 superfast all IP mini set-top box offers 4K Ultra HD picture quality and an upgraded version of Liberty’s ‘GO’ mobile app, enabling customers to watch programmes on the go, whenever and wherever they want.

“In the last couple of years, we’ve been putting a lot of energy into developing our next-generation video platform, which we call Horizon,” Vervoort comments. This has been rolled out to millions of households, with consumer feedback very positive: it reduces churn, thereby increasing day-to-day usage.

“We have really seen that people have embraced that concept. The platform brings together the world of linear TV, time-shift TV, and on-demand, but also over-the-top streaming – all brought together in an intuitive way.”

In addition to providing broadband, video, and mobile communications, Liberty Global is a very active investor in cuttingedge infrastructure, content, and technology ventures, such as ITV in the UK, Plume for smart wifi, Lionsgate for content, AtlasEdge for edge computing, and the motorsport series Formula E. Its content portfolio is positioned to capture changes in the consumption of entertainment, sports, and gaming, providing a holistic experience to customers.

“We very much believe that consumers today are overwhelmed with the amount of video content that they can get these days,” says Vervoort. “As a result, it's important that they come back to a place where they find all their content and it's also served to them in a straightforward way. This means that search and discovery journeys for content on the platform need to provide the end user with what they expect. This can be done very easily by just using our voice assistant.”

In a competitive environment where consumers face overwhelming quantities of media, providing them with a frictionless experience is absolutely essential. As Vervoort explains, these ‘digital journeys’