BT ditches mobile TV service -

"BT can confirm that following a review of its wholesale solutions, the decision has been made not to continue with the Movio service," a statement from the company said on Thursday. "BT is discussing the timescale for the closure of the service with Virgin Mobile. While the feedback from users on the service has been complimentary, Movio sales have been slower than originally expected mainly due to a lack of compatible devices from the big brands. This in turn has been caused by the fragmented nature of the mobile TV market and hesitancy on the part of the main network operators as they seek to fill their own largely under-utilised 3G networks."

Crown Castle bails from mobile TV effort, Modeo’s fate unclear :: RCR Wireless News

Europe goes one way-the US another, all over again?

EU backs standard for mobile TV

Telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding has called on member states to roll out services using the DVB-H standard "as quickly as possible".

Some key players have questioned why Brussels rather than the market is deciding what the standard should be.

The Flo Forum says:

Regarding FLO technology, “recent independent trials of FLO technology in the UK involving several EU-based FLO Forum members highlighted significant technical advantages, which lead to savings on infrastructure spending. FLO offers twice the capacity of DVB-H, or alternatively the same capacity, but with a network build out with significantly reduced cost. This can translate into millions of euros difference in capital and operating expenditures for a network.“

"Technology selection is not an appropriate regulatory tool in innovative and dynamic markets such as mobile TV, especially where the market remains undecided and where the technology continues to evolve rapidly."

ROK is Rolling

Rok is about to take the mobile TV market by storm.It has built up a technical capability with 43 patents applied for to be able to provide reasonable quality TV services to a mobile handset (some at 24 fps) using GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi and upcoming mobile technologies. Its mobile client supports Symbian, Java and Windows 5 with streamed video content which it also aggregates and supplies to mobile operators.

It has three routes to market:

• Complete turnkey white label service to operators. Currently it has 30 licensees each which could acquire 150, 000 subscribers in the first 12 months of service. It expects another 30 by the end of 2008 giving it a potential market of 4.5 million in 2007, 10 million in 2008 and 20 million in 2009. Typical monthly subscriptions run at $8 giving a gross revenue of $80 million per month in 2008.
  
• It has a new partnership with Nokia which will embed the E-series smart phone with its TV software. This is aimed at the business market and will bundle business content with a monthly subscription payable to Rok. It expects some 9 million subscribers over 3 years paying a few dollars a month for content.
• A free service which will be funded by advertising which will be announced shortly. This will have different content to distinguish it from the other services.

The company is looking at other services including video conferencing, VoIP and SIP services for the future, all targeting 3 billion 2G customers.