This week it became clear just how it is that Verizon Wireless and Cingular (AT&T Wireless) can both offer MediaFLO services in the US, despite Verizon signing up for a period of exclusivity in a deal signed as far back as December 2005
The fact that it is only planning to offer an 8 channel service, despite that Qualcomm’s MediaFLO service previously boasting that the technology can deliver 20 TV channels in 6MHz of spectrum, means that there is just a chink of light remaining for DVB-H to find itself a similar footing in the US.
Both Modeo and HiWire are planning services based on DVB-H in the US, and trials have been offered with as many as 17 TV channels around the world in a single slice of spectrum. HiWire is known to have 2 separate 6MHz slices of 700 MHz UHF spectrum and could deliver as many as 32 to 40 TV channels once it goes live.
It now looks like MediaFLO only ever offered Verizon Wireless 8 mobile TV channels, keeping back channel capacity for other cellular operators, such as AT&T. If the AT&T deal is also for 8 mobile TV channels that would still leave spare capacity for MediaFLO to attempt to attract one other mobile operator such as Alltel and T-Mobile or even Sprint if it offers a full 20 TV channels.
But as we understand it the MediaFLO service as it is currently configured only offers 15 TV channels plus some audio and data capabilities, and so unless it is extended can only support Verizon and AT&T when it launches later this year, leaving the rest of the market open.
Most market watchers had expected that there would be some level of co-operation between the two giant US cellular operators in the way that consortia of cellular operators in Europe have gathered together around DVB-H delivered mobile TV. Between 6 and 8 dedicated TV channels for each of the two cellular operators offered alongside a further 6 or 8 common channels offered by both was always the likely scenario in the European models were to be followed. That way both could offer around 13 or 14 TV channels each, and still have channels that differentiated their service.
Now the two rival DVB-H services have some opportunity to swamp (or augment) the offerings that the two major US cellular services have launched with.
But the launch has been aggressive in geographic terms with Verizon Wireless dictating the 20 US markets that MediaFLO was launched into, and while the service price appears high at $15, that give the company space for the inevitable price erosion, and the service really only costs $5 extra for existing customers that take the Verizon VCast streamed TV service plus its mobile web service. Currently they pay $15 for streamed content and $5 for mobile web monthly, but all three services including MediaFLo will be for $25.
The truth is that the quality of MediaFLO TV is so far beyond what is available with VCast that it makes more sense to cancel the existing streamed TV services and take the MediaFLO service instead for $15.
In Italy, the only country that has launched a similar quality of mobile TV using DVB-H technology, the service includes three separate bouquets of channels from Vodafone Italy and Telecom Italia Mobile using the same Mediaset network, and another from 3 Italia that built its own network. The 3 Italia service was launched at $36 a month, and has rapidly grabbed 300,000 users.
Interestingly most mobile TV trials around the world, and there have been around 80 in total, have relied on simulcasting existing TV channels, without change. MediaFLO is offering some existing channels and some with delayed programming that will take popular programs and rebroadcast them into the new mobile TV prime times ‘ on the way to work, the lunch break and early evening.
While the press materials from Verizon describe the MediaFLO service as twice as clear as its existing Vcast service the truth is that it is far better than this, and more like four times as clear. Screen based text, such as sports scores and captions can be quite clearly seen on MediaFLO TV, and there is no ghosting and in spoken scenes there is full lip synchronization. The older Vcast offers half the data for each frame as well as half as many frames, compared to the QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) at up to 30 frames a second of MediaFLO.
All that explains why mobile video is a flop not just in the US, but all over the world with market leader MobiTV this week saying that it has just cleared the 2 million customer bar, despite relationships with hundreds of cellcos worldwide.
Our own report, just about to be published with MRG of the US, points to a market where 244 million high quality mobile TV handsets will be shipped worldwide by 2011, with some 39 million of these shipped in the USA.
The first phone to support MediaFLO for Verizon will be the U620 from Samsung which will cost $199, or $149.99 with a two-year contract. An LG handset will be added shortly and so far these are the only two MediaFLO handsets being made. Each handset requires a new radio, antenna and tuner which uses advanced error correction as well as extra software layers for DRM and EPG.
The MediaFLO service will be switched on this week in Chicago, New Orleans, Portland, Seattle, Las Vegas, Tucson, Kansas, Dallas-Forth Worth; and Salt Lake City with programming from Viacom, CBS, NBC, Disney, and Fox.
In the meantime Crown Castle subsidiary Modeo drew huge operating concession out of the FCC this week for its own network (see separate story)
As was widely expected Qualcomm has also this week managed to get a trial of MediaFLO in Taipei in Taiwan. There are already three other existing DVB-H trials there and one prior DVB-H trial and it is widely expected that DVB-H will get the nod to operate services, but MediaFLO has been mandated by the regulator for a trial.
This will be put together by China Network Systems with Taiwan Television Enterprise. The trial will begin this month and feature four live channels of CNS content and up to three live channels of TTV content. The DVB-H trials that are already operational include the dominant ChungHwa, and FarEastOne Communications and Taiwan Mobile.
Meanwhile the Hindu Business Line reports this week that Qualcomm is also trying to build a consortia backing MediaFLO in India, another market that was previously thought to be committed to DVB-H through a trial in Delhi with the Doordashan Group, although there is also a T-DMB mobile TV trial with Tata Group across New Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta using an existing DAB multiplex.