Media sector analyst briefing - 19th September 2007 | Ofcom

Media sector analyst briefing - 19th September 2007 | Ofcom

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.

Orange France adds seven channels

The French mobile operator Orange has added seven new live TV channels to its TV on mobile service, Orange World, bringing the total number to 60 channels.

The new additions to the service, which also features 3,000 videoclips, are the sports channels Eurosport and Eurosport 2, TMC, NT1 Remix, a mobile version of the NT1 channel, Jet (the first TV channel totally dedicated to TV games), Olympique de Marseille football team’s OMTV and children’s channel Gulli.

At the end of 2006 the operator had over 2 million subscribers to its mobile TV service.

New broadcast coalition could threaten entrenched mobile TV players :: RCR Wireless News

Rather than ceding control of the mobile TV market to the nation’s wireless carriers, nine U.S. television broadcast groups have formed an industry alliance called the Open Mobile Video Coalition to speed the development of a mobile variant for digital broadcast TV.

The broadcasters, which combined own 281 television stations in 110 U.S. markets, made the announcement from Las Vegas in conjunction with the National Association of Broadcasters 2007 show, which starts there today.

The coalition’s aim is to realize the “full potential” of digital broadcast television spectrum in the United States. The spectrum is currently used for stationary TVs, and the current technology does not lend itself to mobile applications. The coalition hopes to rally support around one of the recently announced technologies that will allow local digital TV broadcasters to beam their offerings to portable devices like cellphones.

Does anyone care about high definition?

While annual cinema admissions in the UK grew steadily from 1984 until 2002, these figures have stagnated at around 167 million admissions per year over the last few years, according to the UK Film Council.

By contrast, the number of low picture quality videos watched on the internet has exploded over the last two years thanks to websites such as YouTube. Although precise figures are not available, on average an estimated 100 million videos are streamed off the site and more than 65,000 new videos are added every day.