By Jo Best, 13 February 2007 11:00
NEWS
Despite what participants claim are two successful trials of mobile TV in the UK, no more commercial launches for the service are planned.
At the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona yesterday, Qualcomm and Sky released the results of their second square-eyed dalliance. Meanwhile IPWireless and its operator buddies including 3 and Orange revealed the completion of their Bristol-based experiment.
Sky carried out a technical trial of Qualcomm's MediaFLO standard in Manchester following a similar pilot of the tech last year in Cambridge.
Robin Crossley, strategy adviser on technology for BSkyB, said the trial showed that the MediaFLO System has "considerable technical advantages over DVB-H" yet the broadcaster has not committed to a commercial rollout.
Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said his company is "in discussions with other operators" over MediaFLO, although there are just two services using the standard to date, both with US operators.
Meanwhile, 3, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone revealed the results of their pilot using IPWireless' TDtv. They found users could theoretically watch TV in a moving car, although presumably not while driving, and the spectrum in question - currently unused by the operators - can support a maximum of between 11 and 14 channels.
Still the operators have not committed to a full rollout but intend to examine how the finding could inform a commercial service.
The UK currently has just one broadcast mobile TV offering, from BT Movio and Virgin Mobile, using the DAB-IP standard.
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1. Stuart Fawcett
Now that businesses can provide TV capable mobile devices are, they also purchasing TV licences? If so does one 500 person single site company pay the same for a TV licence as an individual at home?