Digital Switchover Stymies Free Mobile TV In US
Would mobile television in the US take off if US consumers didn’t have to pay for it?
At the three carriers that offer mobile TV services—AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), and Sprint—consumers must pay either a monthly fee, or a pay-per-view charge. But there’s growing evidence from other countries where mobile TV broadcasts are available for free that it’s that little inconvenience of having to pay that prevents consumers from watching, not their short attention spans or the size of mobile phone screens. In Japan, free TV broadcasts killed off the Toshiba-backed paid mobile TV service Moba-Ho! just a few weeks ago, while in Germany, there have been press reports that subscription TV venture Mobile 3.0 will be forced to shut down after operators threw their support behind DVB-T technology that lets users view digital terrestrial TV for free.
So why not give it a whirl in the US? Easier said than done, and especially as the analog shut down approaches, according to an AP feature via IHT.com. Right now it’s possible to get free analog TV broadcasts on a mobile from Chinese manufacturer ZTE. But after the US switches over to digital, these phones obviously won’t work. Plus, when the US was setting down standards for digital TV in the early 90’s, it was optimized for high-definition signals to stationary antennas, since no one had any inkling apparently that people might one day be viewing TV on their phones. (Europe developed their digital TV standards later, and so were able to
US TV broadcasters, meanwhile, would love to be able to broadcast to mobile phones, and have formed an industry alliance the Open Mobile Video Coalition to develop this notion further. They’ve got their own wireless standard in the works—ATSC-M/H—which would allow broadcasters to use regular TV frequencies to reach mobile gadgets. The goal has been to complete the standard by early next year, which would clear the way for broadcasts. Whether they will be free hasn’t yet been determined, however, but the OMVC has already said that ad-funded mobile TV broadcasts could eventually be a $2 billion market.
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Comments (2)
Aug 20, 2008 12:43 PM
Free Mobile TV is the perfect business model.
Advertisers would love to see Free Mobile TV.
Aug 21, 2008 7:36 AM
The critical success factor is not just providing it for free and living from ads, it is also the ability to do interactivity, the coordinated effort between broadcaster, carrier and manufacturer to provide the right user experience.
We should not forget that in addition to the mobility factor, we have the net connectivity and markup rendering factors in our mobile phones.
This is what has happened in Japan, and the reason why it is picking up so well, there is an harmonic relationship between stake holders in the mobile broadcast digital TV providing compelling content that supports interactivity.