Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 20 June 2007 16:27
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 4
Qualcomm makes the point that MediaFLO was designed from the ground up for broadcasting TV to mobile, not adapted from an existing standard for a different purpose and can produce a long list of parameters measured against which MediaFLO comes out ahead of DVB-H.
DVB-H is being promoted as "the global standard," but according to Selby MediaFLO is well down the track of reaching the same level of acceptance and "it is only a matter of time" In terms of commercialisation, DVB-H has a modest lead. In February there were four commercial networks and 30 technical and commercial trials. The first commercial network, launched in Italy in June 2006, was said to have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. MediaFLO has one commercial network, an unspecified number of subscribers, five announced trials and few that Javaid says he can't talk about.
Both DVB-H and MediaFLO use totally separate networks and frequencies from cellular networks. A cellular network provides a back channel for interactivity and authentication but is not essential.
Javaid says that development of the business in other regions could take several forms. "The wireless operators are in a very powerful position because they are the economic buyers of handsets they have the distribution channels and in some markets they will also be the ones that build out these MediaFLO networks. But mostly we believe that the multichannel pay TV operators are in the best position to build these networks. Fundamentally [MediaFLO] is a television business."
The marriage of mobile phone services and mobile TV is largely commercial not technical, and follows naturally from the fact that mobile operators today are offering video services but with limited options for growth because delivery of even broadcast content received by all viewers at the same time requires dedicated network capacity for each viewer.
Another emerging technology is inextricably tied to the cellular network: MBMS (multimedia broadcast multicast service). It works by dedicating part of the cellular operator's frequency for broadcast traffic rather than dedicating it to individual users.
