2/18/2008

Mobile TV evolutions at the Mobile World Congress






The evolution of mobile TV will require a broadcast component. At the MWC, vendors provided some news regarding the progress of various mobile broadcast solutions:

- Alcatel Lucent's DVB-SH, a hybrid solution combining satellite and terrestrial broadcasting, is progressing towards a commercial launch with ICO in the US, with a focus on the vehicular segment (with dedicated non-cellular large-screen terminals installed in vehicles). Elsewhere it is still at trial stage (e.g. with SFR, 3 Italy). There are rollout opportunities for DVB-SH in Europe, following the allocation by the end of 2008 of an EU-wide 30MHz band reserved to hybrid systems, and also in Middle East with S2M's mobile TV project in the region. On the device side, Alcatel Lucent is showing only two DVB-SH devices from Samsung and Sagem.

- Nextwave's TDtv is still a contender in the mobile broadcast space, thanks to the announcement of a commercial pilot with Orange and T-Mobile in the UK. The pilot will involve 1,000 customers from Orange and 1,000 from T-Mobile, in West/Central London, over six months from Q3 2008. It is interesting to note that the two operators will share the TDtv infrastructure and also the UMTS TDD frequencies, in order to make a better business case thanks to increased capacity and lower rollout costs. There will be 24 TV channels in total (10 common, 7 exclusive to Orange and 7 exclusive to T-Mobile) and 10 digital radio stations. Still, TDtv struggles with the lack of handset supported, with only one mobile phone used in the pilot.

- Ericsson continues to support MBMS and has announced the first commercial rollouts of MBMS in the next 12 months.


Advertising has been a key theme for the MWC this year. It is naturally becoming a central concern for players involved in developing mobile TV and video services, which see an opportunity to develop new ad-funded business models. One of the most concrete developments of advertising for mobile TV has been the announcement of an ad-funded video service by Vodafone Italy, prior to the show. QuickPlay is providing the technology that manages the video content and the video ads, and inserts ads into the content, while Amobee provides the mobile advertising platform.

On the other hand, mobile advertising in live channel broadcasting has not seen much progress yet, with only some point solutions available - e.g. banners and interactive services from Streamezzo, local ad insertion in DVB-H from UD Cast.


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