Ready To Watch TV On Your Phone? (A Spotlight On Mobile TV)
by John Awe2007-04-03 00:55:23 | Viewed 4523 times
From a bulky machine that occupied the boot of a car to a snazzy gadget that snuggly fits into the palm of a hand or a man's breast pocket, the mobile phone has gone through a long process of evolution. And all through about six decades of continuous evolution, the mobile phone has retained its relevance to the life of the modern man. At every stage in his growth curve, it has undergone metamorphosis, adding features and functionalities that make it even more indispensable.
It started as an extension of the landline; a bridge between the home and office landlines. It found relevance in the need of the modern professional to remain in communication in and out of home or office, at play, in the car, at lunch and anywhere else. The mobile phone has since moved up from this simplistic role to become more actively involved in the way modern businesses are conducted.
From being a tool for mobile voice communication, mobile phones today are a hybrid of personal computers and a communication device. They come with screens, mini-keyboards, storage for personal information such as contacts, email, documents, the ability to play audio and video files, games, and a communications capability.
With these features and functionalities come a wide range of other uses a mobile phone can be put into in a business or work environment apart from the traditional voice communication. Now, a mobile phone makes it possible for a busy executive to work from any part of the world. He can access and treat critical email messages sent to him regardless of how far away from the office he is. All he needs to do is to access the internet via his mobile phone.
For someone who finds it very difficult typing out email on a mobile phone, he can connect the phone to a laptop such that he can access the internet and work as if he is in his office. And to remove the awkwardness of linking these devices through cables, mobile phones now come with facilities that enable wireless connections.
And in adapting to an age where the passion for music, particularly among the young and the young at heart, has risen to obsessive proportions, mobile phones have largely become music devices. There are mobile phones on the market that are anything between a radio transistor and an MP 3 player. There are many that can give almost the same music experience as traditional music devices. Apart from downloading music for listening pleasure, mobile phone users can also download any music of their choice as ring tones.
Yet the evolution continues. What promises to be a killer application in mobile services in a short while is mobile TV. This service will enable mobile phone subscribers watch television programmes on their mobile phones. Imagine riding on a bus to your office and watching AM Express on NTA on your mobile phone. Or waiting at the airport for a flight and catching up with your favourite comedy series on a local television station.
Imagine getting access to every global TV channel, choosing content on demand, customized to your profile, whenever it suits you; imagine sharing your TV experience with your friends and family, interacting with the show you are watching and receiving advertising targeted to your needs. These are all possibilities that mobile TV affords.
The services and viewing experience of mobile TV over mobile networks differ in a variety of ways from traditional TV viewing. Apart from mobility, mobile TV delivers a variety of services including video-on-demand, traditional/linear and live TV programs. Another exciting opportunity for users is Mobile TV pod casts, where content is delivered to a user"s mobile on demand or by subscriptions. A subscriber can store this content on his handset and view later even when there is no network connection. And a service provider can schedule the delivery to "off-peak" hours, for example during the night.
It is expected that the most popular genres and programmes on mobile TV will be entertainment (soaps, reality shows, comedy, animation), news, sport, music and children's programmes. This content will be tailored with the mobile viewer in mind. Experts predict that mobile TV programming will be a combination of original content from broadcast television and new content made specifically for mobile.
South Korea was one of the earliest countries to try mobile TV. In November 2005, an operator in the country launched mobile TV services using Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB). Already mobile TV service has been launched in some countries in Europe . Operators are launching this service using 3G technology based on what is known as a unicast architecture. This means that each user makes a request to the network to view a particular video. There are many operators in Europe currently offering 3G mobile TV services.
Ultimately, the mobile TV service of the future will be broadcast to multiple subscribers simultaneously. There are already technologies to achieve this. They include 3G Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS), Digital Video Broadcast Hand-held (DVB-H), Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) and MediaFlow.
Leading Original Equipment manufacturers, like Ericsson, have made significant investment in this novelty in mobile services and serious work is on going to achieve the best quality of mobile television programming. The standards are still quite different and non-interoperable, leading to some market fragmentation.
Per Nordlööf, head of Ericsson's mobile TV strategy, believes a fragmented market is inevitable when it comes to broadcast technologies. "We can see Mediaflow in the US and DVB-H in Europe ," he says. "However, MBMS can potentially function wherever you have 3G, so it will be the only true global standard."
Unlike other standards, which require a completely new mobile TV-broadcast network, MBMS can be built on to existing 3G networks. As Nordlööf says: "Operators can use the same business model and, as they own the spectrum, they -- rather than telecom regulators or broadcasters -- are in control."
At the just concluded 3GSM Congress in Barcelona Spain , Ericsson conducted the world's first live demonstrations of mobile TV using MBMS. MBMS is a key enabler of mass market mobile TV penetration and allows an unlimited number of concurrent users to use the service.
The MBMS demonstration showcased high-quality mobile TV on a prototype U365 mobile platform. Participants were able to enjoy interactivity and fast channel switching. The demonstration followed the equipment manufacturer's successful completion of the world's first live MBMS trial in 2006 and was a precursor to the commercial rollout scheduled for 2008. In the interim, Ericsson will also offer several mobile platforms supporting MBMS, enabling commercial launch of handsets during 2008.
MBMS complements the unicast and HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) solutions already employed in mobile networks by utilizing existing infrastructure to add broadcast capabilities.
Kurt Jofs, Executive Vice President, head of Networks, Ericsson, says: "Operators are increasingly looking to leverage existing infrastructure for multimedia services. MBMS is a simple, quick and easily deployed solution that allows different forms of content to be broadcast in different areas of the mobile network.
"3G also opens the door to attractive revenue opportunities, for example, from content fees and broadcast advertising, while giving end users greater flexibility through access to an array of services such as interactive mobile TV and personalized content."
Experts predict that the introduction and adoption of mobile TV will ultimately give way to a more personal and private TV experience than that of traditional TV. This has huge implications for users, content providers and advertisers. Users will benefit from flexibility hitherto not available in traditional broadcast, such that they will be able to receive content anytime, anywhere, choose what is most relevant to them, and even create and upload their own television content. Content providers and advertisers will be able to tailor their offerings more specifically to the user. Overall, this will be a win-win situation for the operators, content providers and users.
How early this novelty takes root in Nigeria will be determined by how soon 3G networks are fired up. Already, the Nigerian Communications has offered provisional licences to four operators to provide 3G services. When these operators begin to roll out services, your mobile phone is sure to become even more indispensable to you.
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About the author
John Awe is a staff of XLR8 Limited, a communications consultancy.
This article was first published in the March 28th 2007 edition of Vanguard, a leading Nigerian daily newspaper.
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