Accenture said it has inked a deal to acquire IBB Consulting, a firm that helps a range of broadband, cable and mobile operators, media companies and technology providers develop their market strategies.

Financial terms were not announced, but Accenture said the deal will help its Accenture Strategy unit advise clients in the communications, media and technology (CMT) industries, and focus on areas such as digital video and IPTV, next-gen mobility, the Internet of Things, advanced advertising and data analytics.

RELATED: Nearly Half of Broadband Consumers Subscribe to a Video OTT Service: Study

After the deal is closed, about 160 IBB Consulting employees will be joining Accenture Strategy’s CMT industry practice. Most of IBB Consulting’s workforce is based in North America, with a subsection based in Australia.

Philadelphia-based IBB Consulting was founded in 2001.

“Companies across all industries are staking claims in the digital world, disrupting media, communications, high tech companies and IoT players, fueling deep competition from industry stalwarts and nimble new entrants alike,” Mark Knickrehm, CEO of Accenture Strategy, said in a statement. “The acquisition of IBB Consulting will enhance our ability to deliver deep, industry-specific strategies for our clients by helping them define and deliver a new breed of capabilities that drive competitiveness, reduce costs, leverage emerging technologies and expand operational excellence to put them atop the intersection of business, technology and operations.”

“Our goal has always been to help clients innovate rapidly with a full lifecycle project approach, from ideation to execution,” added Dr. Imran Shah, co-founder and managing partner of IBB Consulting. “By joining Accenture Strategy, we will combine a strong culture of collaboration with a leading client-centric workforce to bring new value to clients as they seek to capitalize on the convergence happening across their industries.”

Reflecting the surge in consumer adoption and volume of subscription VOD services, almost half of U.S. broadband customers pay for at least one OTT video service, according to a survey from IBB Consulting.

The study, based on a survey of 2,007 U.S. online consumers, found that about one-third subscribe to two OTT services and 18% take three or more.

Millennials are the group most likely to take more than three paid OTT services. Notably, some  63% of paid OTT subscribers also get a traditional pay TV service.

About 61% of those surveyed said they’d pay  at least an additional $2 per month for their favorite SVOD service, if the price were to rise.

IBB said more than half of respondents that plan to subscribe to premium, niche or sports SVOD services are willing to pay between $5 to $15 per month.

More than half (53%) said they plan to spend on a general service such as Netflix or Hulu, compared to 23% that were looking to add a premium network subscription like HBO or Showtime, and 24% were eying either a sports, broadcast network or niche content service.

Nearly half (47%) of consumers who pay for an OTT service said they’d be willing to pay a premium for live content, such as news or sports, with 19% saying they’d pay at least $4 for that live feature, and 29% would spend between $1 and $3.

RELATED: Comcast Continues to Bulk Up on SVOD 

Perhaps surprisingly, having access to live video is of key to millennials. About 52% in the 18-29 age range would be willing to spend on live content, versus 49% in the 30-44 age group, 46% among those who are 45 to 59  years old, and 36% among 60 year-olds. 

RELATED: About One-Third of Free OTT Trials Convert to Paid: Study 

Among other findings, IBB said nearly one-quarter of SVOD users rely on social media for recommendations.

"With this in mind, OTT providers must also consider efforts beyond in-app discovery improvements to intelligently target influencers that can help spread the word about new programs that users might enjoy,” the company said.

A pivot to unlimited data plans by all of the nation’s largest cellular service providers is muddling the wireless plans being developed by Comcast and other U.S. MSOs.

AT&T and Verizon Communications, which recently joined Sprint and T-Mobile in offering unlimited mobile data plans, are undermining strategies that some cable operators were pursuing as they look to stitch their ever-expanding WiFi networks to mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements.

Cable operators can put together unlimited plans of their own that use a WiFi-first stance that offloads traffic on metro and in-home WiFi networks and falls back on cellular connections.

“They’re scrambling internally” as other carriers launch and emphasize unlimited mobile plans of their own, an industry source with knowledge about those strategies said.

“The industry’s rush to unlimited certainly complicates things,” Craig Moffett, senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson, said in an emailed statement. “The cable operators will now have no choice but to make their own wireless plans unlimited as well. That’s a problem. Their revenues will be capped. Their costs will not.”

Still absent from the discussion are precise details about how cable operators intend to enter the wireless market, including how those offerings will be priced and packaged and how they will fit into their broader service offerings.

Comcast, which has created a mobile division and intends to launch a mobile offering of its own by midyear, has shed some light on its service, which will take advantage of the company’s MVNO deal with Verizon.

Speaking at an investor conference in late February, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said company watchers can expect Comcast’s product to be profitible, but it will launch as part of a bundle.

“The product itself is going to save you money by taking our bundle,” Roberts said, and the wireless product will also help Comcast sell other products in its arsenal.

Last week, FierceWireless reported that the popular iPhone will factor into a service that will carry the Xfinity Mobile brand.

Charter Communications is also looking to take advantage of an MVNO deal it inherited from its merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, but hasn’t revealed its go-to-market strategy.

Another person familiar with Comcast’s mobile ambitions said it would be incorrect to think that Comcast’s plan is to take the major mobile carriers head on. Amplifying Roberts’s point, the source said Comcast views the wireless business as additive, a way to enhance and build on its existing product portfolio. “That’s an important nuance,” the source said.

Another industry analyst believes that the surge of unlimited offerings from incumbent mobile giants won’t have a big impact on cable’s efforts to re-enter the market, despite past stumbles like the short-lived “Pivot” joint venture with Sprint.

“It’s another form of bundling,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group, said. “It doesn’t have to be differentiated from other wireless services. The differentiator, potentially, is the ability to bundle. That’s where the value lies, not in the mobile service itself.”

Plus, the latest unlimited craze is not occurring to counter what cable operators have in store, according to Jefferson Wang, senior partner, wireless, at IBB Consulting, a firm that works with a range of mobile and cable providers.

It all ties into competition among those carriers, which have no choice but to match up because the market is already saturated.

“A lot of that innovation is coming from the pricing and packaging side, which means unlimited becomes a very enticing offer to consumers,” Wang said.

He also said not to expect uniformity on how MSOs enter the market or how the move to unlimited models will affect them. How those operators jump in and the goals they set will be determined by whether they have a favorable MVNO agreement and what kind of other network assets they already have at their disposal, including fiber and WiFi infrastructure.

“To get into a consumer smartphone/wireless play is a very narrow definition of a very broad opportunity,” Wang said. “I view it more as a launching point.”

Cable operators have a lot of fiber in their networks, but it’s clear that their advantage in WiFi networking assets will be played aggressively.

Comcast, for example, has about 16 million WiFi hotspots deployed in metro and business locations and inside home gateways. At last check, the Cable WiFi roaming consortium, a group that includes Comcast, Cox Communications, Altice and Charter, has deployed about 500,000 hotspots that their respective customers can use.

The amount of data being offloaded on WiFi networks is expected to surge in the next few years.

As of 2016, 63% of all traffic from mobile-connected devices was being offloaded to fixed networks by means of WiFi devices and femtocells each month, according to Cisco Systems’s latest Visual Network Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast. The same report expects that half of IP traffic — fixed and mobile — will be WiFi by 2021, versus 30% on wired networks and 20% via mobile/cellular.

Wang of IBB Consulting said cable operators must be agile and be ready to make changes quickly in the hypercompetitive and ever-evolving mobile market.

“When you create an entry strategy, things can change,” he said. “You have to make sure you really think through your strategy, but make sure it’s flexible.”

In the early part of this this phase of the virtual reality era, most consumers with VR equipment paid for it, but a sizable portion of the market received VR equipment for free as a gift or as part of a smartphone bundle, a recent study from IBB Consulting found.

RELATED: Samsung Bundles Gear VR with New Smartphones

The study, based on a survey of 3,199 U.S. online consumers conducted last month, found that 56% paid for that equipment, compared to 44% on the free/bundled portion of the ledger.

RELATED Study: 31% of People Interested in VR Have Used It

On the paid side, just 6% forked out more than $1,000 for that equipment, compared to 30% who paid up to $99, and 20% who paid between $100 and $500.

RELATED: Oculus Drops Price of ‘Rift’ VR Headset

The study also found that nearly one-third (30%) of consumers interested in virtual reality already own VR equipment, an indication that the take-rate for headsets is increasing with “considerable room for growth,” noted IBB, which announced its latest round of VR research in tandem with the recent Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain.

Among other findings, 77% of consumers interested in the technology said home is their preferred environment for VR, compared to VR “zones” at areas such as museums and theme parks (24%), an airplane or train (15%), at work (12%), or a subway or bus (7%).

“Clearly, the VR usage environment matters for consumers,” Jefferson Wang, IBB senior partner, said in a statement. “As the world continues the march towards mobility, dedicated VR experience zones and airplanes may be considered safer, contained environments where VR can offer a differentiated immersive experience without the fear of having a bag stolen, missing the next stop or being looked at funny.”

IBB’s study also found that gaming (37%) is the type of VR content that is most interesting to consumers, followed by travel (22%), movies, TV and news (17%), education, theme parks and visiting virtually with friends and family (7% each), and user-generated content (5%).

Get more #INTX2016 news.

About 54% of consumers who are interested in virtual reality think it’s not a fad, but less than one third (31%) of that group have actually tried VR, Interactive Broadband Consulting Group, found in a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers who expressed an interest in the emerging format.

The study, which took aim at the VR opportunity beyond gaming and was released to coincide with this week's INTX show in Boston, discovered that 77% of those surveyed are willing to purchase VR equipment, with 18% saying they’d pay more than $250. Notably, that’s still less than the starting price of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, as well as the coming Sony PlayStation VR.

And VR skews toward men, with two times more men being interested in the platform than women, though interest balances out a bit among middle-aged respondents (age 35-54).

The movies and TV category had the most interest (50%) among all age groups, with men more interested in that category, along with live events, gaming and user-generated content. About 35% of women are more interested in men in travel-themed VR experiences, the study found.

With a nod to OTT video models we see today, 42% said they’d watch a VR ad in exchange for free content, and 34% said they wouldn’t watch ads.

“VR is on the radar of almost every mobile, cable and media client we work with and the most frequent question we get is whether this makes sense for their business right now,” said Jefferson Wang, senior partner at IBB Consulting, in a statement. “Initially, IBB predicts that the VR market winners will be companies that can break down the barriers to entry with an end-to-end play.

IBB said it surveyed 8,471 U.S. consumers during the week of April 25, 2016. Of this group, 1,025 consumers expressed an interest in virtual reality and completed the survey results detailed above.