Ericsson pointed out to us that in our piece last week entitled, ‘MBMS is inevitably seeping into the 3G eco-system,’ that 7 TV channels is not the absolute maximum that an MBMS system can offer and asked us to pass on this clarification.
Initially as MBMS is deployed a 5 MHz carrier will only carry 7 TV channels of video at 128 kbps for each TV channel, around half of the resolution that we think is necessary to have the same apparent visual quality as DVB-H or other similar broadcast TV service. It might carry as few as 4 video streams at 256 kbps.
However over time, as handsets have dual antennas to produce a level of radio diversity this will rise to 10 – 128 kbps TV channels or 7 – 256 Kbps TV channels. Clearly this is not about a logical limit to the number of video streams, more a data throughput limit.
Which is perhaps why opponents of MBMS have been successfully arguing that it cannot create a viable TV bouquet, on its own, or at least not a first, and is really a parallel development to broadcast Mobile TV, that perhaps will lend differentiation to Cellco efforts when working alongside a broadcast bouquet.