As Verizon Wireless launches its first mobile television services based on the Qualcomm MediaFLO system in the US, would-be FLO challenger Modeo is stepping up its own trials, following a favorable ruling from the FCC. The regulator has permitted Modeo, which is building a mobile TV network using the DVB-H standard, but has failed so far to win a major carrier customer, to increase its transmit power by a factor of 10 in urban areas, and twentyfold in rural regions. This narrows the price/performance gap between its system in 1.6GHz, and those in the more spectrally efficient 700MHz, MediaFLO and HiWire.
Modeo needs a boost – both Verizon and AT&T have chosen MediaFLO for their mobile TV services, while Sprint is plowing its own furrow along with its cableco partners, leaving T-Mobile as the hottest prospect for both Modeo and fellow DVB-H operator HiWire. Raising the power limits improves the economics of Modeo’s spectrum by boosting its range and performance.
“Pre-waiver we were in good shape, but now we’re leaps and bounds ahead,” said president Michael Ramke at the launch last week of the company’s new handset from HTC, the first device for its New York beta network.
The waiver applies to the 5MHz of nationwide L-band spectrum Modeo purchased in 2003 between 1.67GHz and 1.675GHz, and responds to the operator’s request to the FCC in August 2005 to increase the aggregate peak power limit from 2kW Effective Radiated Power to 4kW per MHz, for fixed and base station operations in urban and suburban areas, and to 8kW per MHz in rural areas. As such, the ruling increases the aggregate permitted transmission power from 2kW to 20kW in urban and suburban areas and to 40kW in rural areas – which translates to an 80% reduction in the number of transmitter sites needed to cover a market, lowering costs and speeding build-out, according to Ramke. By contrast MediaFLO is using 5kW ERP.
The FCC’s approval is initially limited to the 30 cellular market areas (CMAs) specified in Modeo’s initial market deployment plan, which covers 40% of the US population. However, if no problems emerge, it could be extended to the whole country, and will set an important precedent for other technologies that are arguing that current power limits are excessively stringent, given modern anti-interference techniques and the social and economic need to improve rural access by covering large areas cost effectively, to support sparse populations and still make operators a profit.
The new rules could strengthen Modeo’s chance of winning business with carriers that are heavily focused on the rural markets, where it has proved hard to introduce multimedia services profitably, denying the operators the benefits of new 3G+ revenue streams. An obvious example would be Alltel, which has heavy rural focus, though its CDMA network might predispose it to follow Verizon towards MediaFLO, whose 700MHz spectrum is also rural-friendly.
Modeo’s New York test site uses 65 transmitter sites and has a footprint of 475 square miles, covering a population of 10 million plus a transient population of 40 million tourists and 100 million airport travelers a year.
Ramke was brave in the face of MediaFLO’s recent successes, insisting the US market is still up for grabs. “70% of the addressable device market is still in play. The race for success in the mobile TV space has only begun. It will be defined by mass market consumer adoption, not by distribution deals,” he told guests at the reception for the HTC phone.