Mobile Potential

It's that time of the year again, as the Mobile World Congress show opens in Barcelona, when you have to consider if mobile TV is making progress, and, lo and behold, comes the announcement that two UK mobile operators are about to launch a localised mobile TV service in West London.

Orange and T-Mobile are using NextWave Wireless's TDtv technology with Red Bee providing the delivery content management and creative glue. Twenty four TV and ten radio channels will be available at launch.

The service will be managed using NextWave subsidiary and relative mobile video old timer PacketVideo's MediaFusion platform, which has a strong cross selling (eg downloads and ringtones) element.

I haven't yet been able to establish the pricing model, but if the precedent set by 3 is anything to go by, it will need to be a fixed, low cost package.

I'm still not convinced that we're at the point where such services are financially viable - especially in this instance since the PacketVideo delivery, which is efficient at the networks level, demands considerable serving power per viewer.

But, with devices such as the iPhone offering an improved viewing experience, there is clearly growing potential for mobile TV and this is an important step to realising the anytime, anyplace, any device world of TV 2.0.