By Brad Smith
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
LAS VEGAS - Everyone involved in the budding mobile TV market may agree that it is going to be a mass market opportunity, but they don't necessarily agree on when or how that will happen.
The Mobile TV and Video Summit, part of the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention, drew a fair amount of optimism about the future. There wasn't a lot of news out of the conference, however, except for mobile TV service provider Modeo talking about the results of its New York City beta trial last winter.
Some people thought Modeo, or fellow DVB-H carrier Hiwire, might provide more detail about their plans for a commercial launch. Modeo President Michael Ramke would only say the company was waiting to launch when it strikes a deal with a service provider partner, which could be a telecommunications operator, satellite provider or cable operator. He said Modeo thought about launching without a provider partner but decided against it.
Scott Wills, president of Hiwire, declined to go into detail about his company's plans. He did say Hiwire is nearing the conclusion of its trial in Las Vegas and will announce the launch of its commercial service by the end of June. Hiwire, which brags it owns the most 700 MHz spectrum in the United States , has partnered with T-Mobile USA in the Las Vegas trial. Wills hinted that Hiwire would charge $15 or less for mobile TV bundled with a cell phone plan. He also said Hiwire will launch with more channels, 24, than any mobile broadcast TV provider has yet offered.
But Wills also was among the more skeptical about how long it will take for mobile TV to be a mass market opportunity. He suggested it would be three to five years for that to happen. A fellow panelist, HBO executive Robert Zitter, agreed with Wills but three others - Jeffrey Brown of Qualcomm's MediaFLO subsidiary, Joe Zaller of Snell & Willcox, and Verizon Wireless's Robin Chan - forecast widespread adoption in two years or less.
There was an undercurrent of competition throughout the summit about what consumers actually want out of mobile TV, especially between providers offering unicast TV to cell phones and those like MediaFLO, Modeo and Hiwire with a broadcast strategy. The traditional TV broadcasters were not officially part of the summit, but questions were asked about how local TV would play into mobile (the answer generally was they would, but there wasn't any discussion of exactly how).
Modeo's Ramke held a press conference to talk about the provider's 6-week beta trial in New York , which involved 138 users and one handset made by HTC. It carried just six video channels, four of them news or sports, and eight audio channels.
Ramke said the trial showed users overwhelmingly satisfied with mobile TV coverage, quality and content, although users wanted more than six video channels. The trials channels included MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, Fox Sports, Discovery and E!. Every channel received 70% or higher satisfaction rate, Ramke said.
The Modeo executive also said users averaged watching TV 23 minutes a day in the first few days but later leveled off at around 15 minutes.
He said one of the changes Modeo will make in the future is to offer a handset capable of acting as a personal video recorder so that programs can be downloaded and saved for later viewing.