Click to View

The mobile TV industry is in its start-up phase today. As we saw in the first two parts of this three-part (see Part I & Part II) series, Sprint, Verizon and Cingular are all now offering services that deliver streaming video content to subscribers with cellular handsets, most of it short video on demand (VOD) clips.

True mobile TV broadcasting is coming, however.

Handset and network equipment vendor Qualcomm, developer of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) digital wireless technology, and Crown Castle International, a cellular tower operator, have both announced plans to offer mobile broadcast TV services in the U.S. Mobile broadcasters are also gearing up in Europe and Asia.

Separate Multimedia Networks
These new players in the wireless ecosystem expect to work with cellular operators, but will use their own dedicated multimedia networks that run on different frequencies - 700 MHz in the case of Qualcomm, 1.4 GHz for Crown Castle. Subscribers will need new handsets with integrated radios for both circuit switched voice and broadcast video.

"They'll work like cable or satellite providers today, broadcasting to many devices at once," explains Ken Hyers, principal analyst with ABI Research. "This is where we're going to see lot of major growth in mobile TV beginning next year." Hyers authored the recently published ABI report, Mobile Broadcast Video Services.

The broadcasters will use "multicasting" technology to deliver video to mobile devices. With today's unicast services, the provider opens a dedicated channel to the subscriber's device, as it does when connecting a voice call.

With multicasting, the signal is sent once and distributed to each cell site. Subscriber devices pick up signals from the air the way TVs or radios do and are able to switch among multiple channels. Multicasting provides tremendous bandwidth efficiencies.

Qualcomm developed its own proprietary FLO (Forward Link Only) multicasting technology. Qualcomm and others will build handsets. Crown Castle is using an emerging industry standard, DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld). Nokia and Samsung are already committed to making DVB-H handsets.

Why do we need these new mobile broadcasting technologies? Will the video be any better than that offered on 3G-based services such as Verizon's VCAST? And why would cellular operators like Verizon work with mobile broadcasters when they have their own surprisingly successful unicast video services? These are just a few of the questions around the Qualcomm and Crown Castle ventures.

Quality
The video probably will be somewhat better quality, Hyers says, mainly because of superior bandwidth efficiency and control on the mobile broadcasting networks. Video will not be as subject to network contention and congestion as it may become on 3G cellular networks.

But it won't be any better in terms of frames per second (fps), which determines the smoothness of motion, Hyers believes. (Qualcomm, however, claims its FLO technology will be able to deliver up to 30 fps, the standard broadcast television frame rate. VCAST delivers up to 15 fps.)

Cooperation
On the other hand, he adds, "If one [cellular operator] signs up with a digital broadcaster and gives customers a choice, then you'll see the operators on the losing end boost their [unicast] video content or go to a broadcaster."

There is another reason operators may eventually have no choice but to partner with mobile broadcasters. Although the volume of video traffic on today's 3G and 2.5G networks has little impact on bandwidth capacity, if mobile TV is as successful as analysts like Hyers believe it will be, the operators may face capacity shortfalls in future. "They could be a victim of their own success," Hyers says, "and have to find additional capacity. One-to-many broadcasting is one way to do that."

Sharing
Having to split revenues with the broadcasters would be a new and not very attractive proposition, but it could have silver linings. The broadcast content could drive traffic on the cellular network. The broadcast and cellular systems will integrate seamlessly at the handset level.

Subscribers watching a broadcast baseball game could click a button to switch over to the cellular network and surf to a Web page with player statistics, for example, or a mobile e-business site selling team merchandise.

For now, the operators want to keep tight control of their customers and wring all the revenue they can from their own video services. But that could change. "I think there's going to be some evolution in how operators look at this market," Hyers says. He speculates that broadcasters and cellular operators have already had preliminary discussions.

Availability
The mobile broadcasters are in any case forging ahead. Crown Castle in partnership with Nokia ran a limited trial and demonstration of its technology in Pittsburgh in late 2004 and early 2005 and has said it expects to begin offering service in selected U.S. markets before the end of the year.

Qualcomm is still developing its technology, but expects to be in business by mid-2006. European and Asian operators are hoping to have mobile broadcast systems up and running in time for the 2006 World Cup of Soccer, which will be played in Germany in June. Hyers is skeptical they can make it.

"I think there's a question about whether there will be enough handsets available by that time," he says. "They're really pushing the edge right now to have enough out in 12 months, and really they'd have to be out in a bare minimum of nine months to get them in to the sales channels in time."

Meanwhile, the battle over which of the two mobile broadcast technologies will prevail has hardly begun yet.

Qualcomm will offer a complete proprietary system that works in concert with CDMA2000 1X, 1xEV-DO or WCDMA cellular systems. A FLO chipset for handsets will be available later this year. The company's MediaFLO Content Distribution System manages the distribution of signals and will allow operators to send either unicast or multicast content and integrate the two seamlessly.

Standards
Qualcomm claims its multicast technology will be superior to DVB-H in terms of handset power efficiency and coverage characteristics. It will require 30 to 50 times fewer towers than cellular and higher frequency systems, the company says.

Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced it would spin off a subsidiary, MediaFLO USA Inc. to deploy and operate a nationwide U.S. "mediacast" network, capable of delivering 50 to100 national and local content channels, including up to 15 live streaming channels and many clip-cast and audio channels. The company expects MediaFLO USA to burn through $800 million over the next 4 to 5 years, some of which "may" come from third party investors.

The DVB-H standard Crown Castle is using has been formally adopted by both the DVB Organization and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). DVB-H trials are underway in the Germany, France, UK, Finland, Sweden and other countries, with more trials expected to launch later in 2005.

Delivery Mechanisms
a Samsung, which claims it will be first to market with DVB-H phones, recently demonstrated a prototype with a two-inch screen supporting 226,000 colors, up to 30 frames per second (fps) and speeds of 300 kilobits per second (Kbps) per channel. In April, Crown Castle announced it would use Microsoft's Windows Media and Windows Media DRM 10 to deliver its service.

Crown Castle, a $537-million-a-year company, has also formed a subsidiary, Crown Castle Mobile Media, to build a national network and offer mobile TV service. It has already attracted one outside investor, the New York-based investment bank of Allen & Company LLC, which has taken a minority interest in the new company.

Whatever happens going forward, it is hard to imagine the mobile communications industry remaining substantially unchanged from what it is today. New players - heavy-hitting video content providers, mobile broadcasters - will alter the cellular landscape forever, though possibly not for good. If you thought people talking on their mobiles while walking down the street or in meetings or restaurants was irritating, start to imagine the irritation factor of people watching TV - everywhere!