AT&T To Launch Mobile Broadcast TV in May

AT&T announced that it will start offering a Mobile Broadcast TV service in the USA based on Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology in May this year. The service will include 10 channels, two of them exclusive to AT&T, and will be supported by two handsets: The Samsung Access and the LG Vu. Pricing for the service has not been announced.

AT&T is the second provider of MediaFLO mobile TV in the USA, following Verizon who launched the Verizon Vcast mobile TV service one year ago. Verizon announced that it will also add two exclusive channels to its service, ESPN Radio and MTV Tr3s. However, Verizon has not released any subscriber numbers for its mobile broadcast TV service yet.

Mobile Broadcast TV Users in Korea Reach 11 Million

Telecoms Korea reported yesterday that as of February 29th 2008, the number of satellite DMB subscribers reached 1.31 million, and the number of terrestrial DMB users reached 9.69 million, giving a total of 11 million mobile broadcast TV users in Korea (I am using the term "users" for T-DMB since it is a free-to-air service, and not a subscription service).

Monthly sales of T-DMB devices are in the range of 400-500K a month, meaning that by the end of March the number of T-DMB users alone will pass the 10 million mark. S-DMB growth is not reported in the article, but it seems that S-DMB has stalled in Korea since similar numbers were reported at the end of 2007.

Strand Consulting: No Business Model for Mobile Broadcast TV

CIO Magazine quotes John Strand from Strand Consulting providing a grim outlook for mobile broadcast TV services. Some of the highlights include:

• Only Nokia and other vendors can make money from mobile TV today, because they can sell network equipment and phones.
• Operators can't profit from mobile broadcast TV since consumers won't be willing to pay enough to make up for content costs.
• The future of TV is on demand, so supporters of mobile broadcast TV are betting on a dying technology.

EU Selects DVB-H As Preferred Mobile TV Standard

The European Commission has selected the DVB-H standard as the preferred technology for mobile broadcast TV transmissions in Europe. The commission will promote the standard in all 27 member states, in an attempt to establish a single market for Mobile TV. Member states will not be required, however, to ban other standards from their market.