In December, Vodafone started offering its customers a range of popular international TV channels, such as Eurosport, Fashion TV and Discovery, as well as a number of national TV channels.

Anders Jensen, director of Marketing and Sales at Vodafone in Sweden, says the service has been a success. “We launched mobile TV as a free trial first to see how big the interest would be,” he says.

“It quickly became popular – in fact, it was the most used of all our 3G services. We expected the numbers to go down when we started to charge for the service some weeks ago, but that hasn’t happened. The usage is still very high – a vast majority of those who tried the service initially are now subscribing to it.”

The most popular channel among Vodafone users is Eurosport, and Jensen attributes this to the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, which was shown on the sports channel. “What people see on regular TV, they’ll want to watch on their mobiles,” he says. “I don’t think mobile TV will replace traditional TV – it will complement it.”

Jensen wants to expand Vodafone’s channel portfolio in Sweden, and that means adding the biggest national TV channels to the list.

“We have parts of TV4, but I want to have the opportunity to offer Kanal 5 and TV3, and all the rest,” he says.

Tele2 in Sweden offers TV3 and seven other national and international channels, including TV8 and BBC World. In fact, TV3 is the most watched channel among its 3G users. “Our most popular channels are those that get the highest ratings on regular TV,” says Thomas Ekman, director of Sales and Marketing at Tele2 in Sweden.

Tele2 launched its mobile TV channels last September and the service has been very well received by its customers. “Along with radio, it’s the most popular 3G service we offer,” Ekman says, adding that so far, between 25 and 30 per cent of the company’s 3G base are using it.

“We have found that our customers watch mobile TV for about five minutes each session,” he says. “A conclusion that can be drawn from this is that mobile TV could become the short-version complement to regular TV programs.”

One of the biggest national TV channels available to customers of Tele2 and Vodafone, and all the other mobile operators in Sweden, is the public service broadcaster SVT. SVT’s mobile service, mobil.svt.se, was recently voted the best service in Sweden, and offers customers news, text-TV (which is the televised text version of SVT) and a range of popular programs.

Johan Wahlberg, project manager for mobile TV at SVT, says the response has been enormous, with news and entertainment being the biggest hits. “Since we started last year, we’re getting more and more users,” he says. “People like the mix of short videos and factual information.”

One of the most popular entertainment programs is the film review program Filmkrönikan. “Filmkrönikan is an example of how a program can go from being pure entertainment in the TV world to becoming a consumer product in the 3G environment,” Wahlberg says. “People have started to watch the film reviews featured on Filmkrönikan before going to the movies.”

Another popular service is SVT’s Open Archives. “SVT has a lot of old programs in the archives and parts of this material are available to mobile users,” Wahlberg says. “It’s fun to be able to see a black and white program on a 3G phone.”

SVT has also made its mobile TV service available to hearing-impaired viewers. “Today, on regular TV, we only give hearing-impaired viewers 10 minutes of programming time each day but, thanks to 3G, we’re now able to give them news whenever they want it,” Wahlberg says.

Jensen at Vodafone and Ekman at Tele2 believe that giving people news and other content whenever and wherever they want is the big benefit of mobile TV. “Mobile TV lets you kill five minutes whenever you have them,” Jensen says. “It lets you watch an ice-hockey final or the Olympics, even though you are nowhere near a TV set.

“There is a convenience factor to watching mobile TV and, in our society, a convenient service has great potential to become a good business opportunity.”

Torunn Hansen-Tangen