Mobile TV is becoming a fact of life, even if it is in its infancy. And like all great technological ideas at the start of their lifecycle, the market is watching to see which way it develops. Three factors will affect this development more than anything else: what customers want to watch; when they want to watch it; and how quickly providers can turn mobile TV into a viable commercial proposition.

“Successful mobile TV will be a blend of regular TV programming with interactive, on-demand channels,” says Anders Bergtoft, Ericsson’s Head of Content and Media.

“Viewing patterns show that customers want programming they’re familiar with, such as sports and music content, but then if they’ve got a few minutes to spare and want to catch a news update, they want to see it immediately, not in 20 minutes’ time.”

Combining regular “linear” content and on-demand programming is a complex and expensive task. 3G networks are two-way communication networks by default and can therefore cater to these on-demand and interactive services. Newly emerging mobile TV broadcast networks however are built as one-way networks, so have to cooperate with 3G networks in order to meet these consumer demands. According to In-Stat, a market research company, mobile TV broadcast networks have further obstacles in the form of build-out costs and the availability of broadcasting spectrum, currently occupied by existing TV channels.

Ericsson’s answer is to offer a cost-efficient solution using a mix of technologies delivered via existing 3G mobile network infrastructure. The capacity in existing 3G networks allows for the development of mobile TV services to a mass market level, and is the fastest way to get a new mobile service off the ground. “Then there are the handsets,” Bergtoft says. “There is a wide range of existing mobile handsets out there that are Java equipped and that can handle 3G technology – other solutions would mean developing a new receiver resulting in the customer carrying an additional device.”

Unicast, or the separate transmitting of content from a single source to a single destination or handset, can be used to provide the on-demand elements of the service offer, complementing the broadcasting of mass-market, more-popular programs. With 98 percent of all mobile TV viewers using unicast, this is clearly the fundamental technology. Mobile operators can easily expand their unicast capacity and capitalize on their network investments. Existing 3G networks have the added advantages of already having the required spectrum allocations, plus tried and tested indoor and outdoor coverage. 

The two-way unicast capabilities of existing cellular networks are, by far, the most used technology to date for mobile TV. More than 80 percent of all launched mobile TV services in the world are distributed over these existing mobile networks. Ericsson has supported more than 40 percent of these, giving it a market leader position as a vendor of mobile TV and video solutions.

Multimedia Broadcast Service (MBMS) – or broadcasting over 3G networks – allows a traffic channel to be shared by users that are simultaneously watching the same program in the same area.

Existing networks can be smoothly migrated to MBMS without additional spectrum requirements, allowing for mass-market mobile TV services for an unlimited number of users in every cell.

Using a combination of unicast and broadcast, users will have only one interface (TV client) in one terminal to access all content and network capacity and investments can be optimized. The combination of unicast and broadcast will therefore be the best way to meet personalization and mass-market needs.

For the latest developments in television, stay tuned to your phone.