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Apr. 19, 2010

There are couple of reasons why television broadcasters in the U.S. are late in promoting mobile TV. The first one is that the ATSC (the Advanced Television Systems Committee) finally has standards in place for mobile TV.

Overall, the A/153 ATSC Mobile DTV (digital television) standard was passed in October of last year and device certification began two months later.

The standard is simply an extension of the existing DTV standard and was chosen because it allowed TV broadcasters to add mobile capability to their existing spectrum versus acquiring new equipment, as would have been necessary if they had chosen FLO TV’s existing proprietary technology.

Secondly, television broadcasters don’t want to be left out of the mobile market, not by a long shot. They want their content and their advertisers getting through to as many people as possible, whether it's by wireless or by any other means.

And even a third reason is that the Federal Communications Commission is looking to take away some of their under-used TV spectrum for use in wireless broadband. In fact the government agency has been proposing that for many years now, even though the commission never executed its plan for a number of reasons.

If television broadcast stations can prove that their unused spectrum will be put to good use for mobile television, it could help dissuade the FCC from asking them to fork over precious bandwidth under previous recommendations already set forth in the FCC’s broadband plan.

In the past, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) has been very critical of the agency’s plan to ask television broadcasters to put their spectrum up for auction, questioning whether the measures will be as voluntary as promised.

The FCC says that less than 25 percent of the 500 MHz recommended under the broadband plan will come from broadcast spectrum and that the plan will move forward on a strictly voluntary basis. There are some that disagree with that, and have been since the beginning, saying that broadcasters should instead be forced to fork over their unused spectrum.

Overall, the entry of industry heavyweights like NBC, FOX and CBS into the U.S. mobile TV market could have a ripple effect on a long-nascent industry.

ABI Research analyst Fritz Jordan says the joint venture is exactly what the U.S. mobile television industry needs. “It’s one of the things that had to fall into place,” he says.

Overall, adoption rates of mobile television service in the U.S. has been rather slow. FLO TV’s proprietary broadcast technology has struggled quite a bit in the recent past to attract subscribers and technology running over wireless networks from the likes of MobiTV and others that have been hampered by network speeds.

That’s what could happen when local television stations begin broadcasting free mobile content to wireless handsets. The eventual availability of free content could go a long way toward building low consumer interest in mobile TV and may eventually translate into a willingness to pay for premium content of the sort offered by FLO TV. Or will it?

But other challenges lay in store for the technology in the very near future. The U.S. is very different from other markets where mobile television is popular because it lacks the large-scale mass transit infrastructure ideally suited for consuming the technology in the first place.

One of mobile TV’s biggest success stories so far is in Asia, where analog-based mobile TV chips are embedded in wireless devices to provide free mobile broadcasts. In-Stat analyst Frank Dickson says that the growth of the service can be attributed to the fact that it’s both free and widely available.

The dozen broadcasters that banded together this week on a mobile television initiative argue their plan will offer consumers mobile access to video content while reducing congestion of the nation's wireless broadband infrastructure and show the FCC that they deserve to keep their spectrum.

“One of the key messages that we’re learning right now is that there is some hesitation to pay for subscription mobile TV service,” says Dickson. “The price has to come down for it to become really popular.”

“There’s actually a cultural difference in the U.S. as to how people consume mobile television. In other parts of the world, they use it on mass transit. The use-case model in the U.S. is tough,” added Dickson.

The decision of TV broadcasters to leap into the mobile television space will undoubtedly buoy an industry that has struggled to stay afloat so far. What’s even less clear is whether the mobile TV will be able to compete with the entertainment value of mobile broadband.

Dickson added “mobile TV is going to be competing with mobile broadband. Competition for entertainment has switched from being just video-centric to being both Internet and video-centric to a large degree.”

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Source: VBX.