From Cellular-News I found a good article by Dow Jones Newswires about the business prospects for transmitting television programs to cellular phones. The article highlights problems with the speed and efficiency of wireless networks:
"To achieve mass-market appeal, television on pocket-sized screens needs to resemble conventional television, said Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin. At this point, existing wireless networks aren't fast enough to deliver high-quality video and sound, he said.
"While new 3G networks will help alleviate this problem, it will take time for the inevitable glitches to be ironed out and for mass adoption to occur, he said.
"Another problem with today's cellular networks is they don't stream television signals efficiently. For example, if three million people tune into 'Desperate Housewives' at the same time on the same network, then that network would need to send out three million signals simultaneously, eating up a lot of bandwith."
Smart Video's business
Smart Video, an Atlanta company providing video compression technology for TV to cellular phones, provides streaming technology at 15 frames per second (fps) for cellular phones with the Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile operating systems.
The company thinks today's cellular networks could support three million to five million users for TV services without becoming too congested.
Ken Dulany, a wireless analyst at Gartner, Inc., says cellular TV services should be broadcast -- point to multipoint -- just the way regulation television programs are delivered. That's the technique used by Qualcomm
Qualcomm's concept
The one-to-many technique is under development by Qualcomm, that is spending $800 million over four to five years to develop its CDMA-based MediaFLO USA network.
The system is being designed to work via 700 MHz spectrum, where Qualcomm has licenses, to support 50 - 100 channels broadcasting up to 15 live streaming channels (plus additional video and audio clips) at 30 fps.
Jeff Lorbeck, the vice president and general manager for MediaFLO, says, "Streaming video is fantastic, but it is somewhat success-limited...as opposed to broadcast TV where a transmitter sends out a signal and the signal is picked up by hundreds, thousands, millions of TVs."
Will people pay?
Even if video to cellular phones works well, will people pay for the service. As Dulaney says in the article, people have only a certain amount of money to spend and they already are spending a sizable amount on cellular services.
Crown Castle International is developing a TV/cellular network, in conjunction with cellular operators and handset vendors, based upon the DVB-H standard. Michael Schueppert, president of the company, says in the article he believe people will pay $15 a month for cellular TV services.
The SmartVideo-based service cost $12.95 a month. Richard Bennett, the chief executive of SmartVideo, says a rival service, MobiTV, developed by Idetic, has captured 300,000 subscribers at $9.95 per month over the Cingular Wireless and Sprint PCS networks.
"In the mobile space, that's a huge number," he says.
As I've written...
I think video programs to cellular phones will succeed as a business. It will just take time and lots and lots of money.
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