Mobile TV is widely expected to be a hit in the near future but for that to happen, the industry has some issues to iron out.

Charles F. Moreira

Mobile TV – the killer application of the future? was one of the topics for panel discussion at the 37th Annual Conference of the International Institute of Communications (IIC) in Kuala Lumpur on the 18th and 19th September.

“That is a difficult question to answer,” said Dato’ Ismail Othman, director of MiTV Corporation, one of the four panelist.

“Mobile TV looks like the next new service coming out but so far, viewers expect to watch TV on a big screen, so we need to create an environment where people are willing to watch TV on a mobile phone but can we accept that without falling asleep?” “Mobile TV as a killer application is a big word but do we have the right content for it or will it end up being killed instead?” he asked rhetorically.MiTV was one of the new 3G licensees and was selected for its ability to provide programme content over 3G, since it already provides TV service to viewers.

Survey results showed there was significant acceptance of mobile TV viewing on mobile phones among 400 participants in two pilot trials in Australia and one in Oxford, according to panelist Peter Kepretoes, Broadcast Australia business development manager.The trials comprised 400 mobile TV handsets given to participants who could receive 10 subscription and six broadcast channels on them.

“The participants found picture quality reasonable and said they viewed TV on their phones at various events, watch replays and rather surprisingly, 25% said they viewed mobile TV at home and the survey found that they wanted their private TV, instead of having to fight with family members over which channel to watch,” said Kepreteos.Current streaming video on mobile phones consumes bandwidth in network infrastructures and leads to congestion, especially when there are a large number of simultaneous viewers.On the other hand, mobile TV is digital TV broadcast directly to suitably equipped mobile phones over UHF (Ultra High Frequency) channels used for conventional terrestrial TV broadcasts or though the cellular network. Most importantly, the broadcasts can be received by an unlimited number of viewers without imposing additional bandwidth demands on the infrastructure, so mobile operators are showing an interest in it.

“Mobile TV can also be received on notebook and desktop PCs through a suitable USB dongle and on suitably equipped DVD players as well. It will change the way people watch TV, and phones could serve as set-top boxes to TVs,” said Kepreteos.Critical to its success is the availability of suitable spectrum, the use of H.264 compression and enough chip manufacturers producing multi-band, multi-standards chips to pick up these broadcasts, some of which Kepreteos believes will be provided for free and some as pay channels, which most importantly must be provided at the right price.“The general feeling is it will require a consortium of TV broadcasters and mobile operators to operate the service and the quality of the viewing experience will determine whether or not mobile TV becomes a mass application,” he said.

“Pacific Century Cyberworks’ Sunday mobile operator is one of Hong Kong’s 3G operators which launched mobile TV with five channels, including a 24-hours, free news channel. It has a customer base of several thousands and this is a fast-paced development with no regulations in place,” said panelist Ha Yung Kuen, deputy director-general of telecommunications, Office of the Telecommunications Authority, Hong Kong.

So far, it’s based on proprietary technologies and there currently are nine different mobile TV technologies. The coming 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) Release 6 standard due in 2007 or 2008 will contain Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) which allows broadcasters to transmit streaming digital TV, audio or text to subscribers with MBMS receivers in a single stream over the network infrastructure to each 3G, EDGE, GPRS or GSM base station. They can also download and store the programmes as files on their device for later viewing.

Current unicast systems requires one stream per mobile device, which adds up to more aggregate bandwidth consumed in the network when there are more simultaneous viewers.
MDMS also allows users to interact with the system via the cellular network. “The Hong Kong government is looking into developing mobile TV regulatory policies,” said Ha.

Panelist Roslan Mohamad, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission head of content regulation and development believes that while MDMS for mobile TV will be delivered over its own channel, he sees problems over whether to allocate the channel to service or content providers, as well as spectrum allocation issues. Regulators will also have to decide whether to define mobile TV as a broadcast or communications service.

Also with nine different mobile TV technologies so far, he foresees problems of interoperability, compatibility, convergence and sufficient coverage or we could end up facing lots of complaints about mobile TV services, like what is happening in South Korea; which leads to mobile TV deployment.

Besides MBMS, other mobile broadcast technologies include BCMCS (BroadCast MultiCast Services), the European DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld), Japanese ISDB-T (Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial), Korean T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) and the Qualcomm proprietary MediaFLO (Media Forward Link Only) technology in the U.S.

MBMS is delivered over 3G, EDGE or GPRS networks, BSMCS over CDMA2000 1x EV-DO networks, while the rest use OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) modulated signals like that used by WiMAX and WiFi 802.11a and g.

“We may need to manage these differences or mandate which standard to use,” said Roslan.