Talking to local US companies in and around the ATSC market we have been hit but a sudden insight into the way AT&T in particular and US cellcos in general have been thinking about the ATSC M/H market.
They want to bundle it into netbooks and bypass handsets altogether, so instead of seeing Mobile TV as a valid technology in its own right, the US cellcos are starting to see ATSC M/H in terms of a tactical warhead to edge the netbook battle, and that’s all.
Of course wireless broadband is a big battleground and it will be for the next ten years at least, whereas Mobile TV is perhaps more complicated and it is harder to see that it is almost as strategic in its own right. If no-one successfully launches mobile TV in the US, what does AT&T care, because it will mean Verizon doesn’t have it, whereas its existing suppliers are fuelling the mobile broadband war, and data is where the mobile battle currently IS.
But if the netbook idea succeeds it will mean that at least one of the major cellcos will have a revenue sharing deal with at least one collective of broadcasters, and if that happens, there’s no reason NOT to try out one or two phones down the line, especially if they are exclusive, which would mean LG getting some US exclusives for a change since it is the dominant ATSC M/H chip and handset suppler, to date, because it invented much of the underlying technology.
So the netbook could be the lever to create early economies of scale in the ATSC M/H chip business, and that would let Mobile TV into the US by the back door, where it can slowly grow back into handsets and also into more broadcast stations.
ATSC M/H exciters are already in place or being put in at 70 TV station transmitter sites, to all come onstream this year and early next (there are about 30 working so far). If more stations see that there is netbook based advertising revenues to be had then it will mean more TV channels, and that in turn will drive adoption.