BT announces world-beating family programming deals for next generation TV
Microsoft recently announced a partnership with British Telecom Group and Virgin Mobile to launch a mobile TV service in the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, British Telecom announced three more deals with leading rights owners to widen the range of family entertainment available on its eagerly-awaited national next generation TV offering. Also, Virgin Mobile became the first European cellular network to launch a live digital TV service on mobile phones.
For the past several months, BT has been building a network to broadcast digital TV over mobile phone networks. BT said in January that it plans to offer the network, called BT Movio, to mobile carriers that want to offer TV service to their customers.
Building on last month’s announcement of deals with three of the world’s biggest entertainment companies, BBC Worldwide, Paramount and Warner Music Group, BT has swiftly added deals with documentary and factual powerhouse National Geographic Channel and with kids TV programming leaders HIT Entertainment and Nelvana.
Significantly, our service will be offered nationwide and not restricted to metropolitan areas, and customers will not be required to commit to a monthly subscription.
The first mobile operator to use the BT network to deliver TV service is Virgin Mobile. The mobile operator–part of British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin empire — will begin selling handsets equipped to receive the BT Group PLC’s BT Movio digital television and radio services later this year, both companies said.
The two companies conducted a four-month trial last year with roughly 1,000 users in London. Virgin Mobile plans to launch the service sometime this summer. Consumers can expect to get at least five TV stations as part of the initial launch, along with a number of radio channels.
Graeme Hutchinson, sales and marketing director at Virgin Mobile, emphasized that it is live television, unlike the prepackaged video downloads that have been available for some time of news reports, music videos and short series.
The service will work on a new phone called the Virgin Triliogy, which was developed jointly by BT, TTPCom and HTC, one of the worlds biggest design manufacturers for mobile devices. The phone will run Windows Mobile 5.0 and will have one-button access to live digital television.
There are varying digress of opinions on where the role for live video on mobile phones is, said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, during his keynote speech in Barcelona. With the appropriate amount of cleverness from operators and content makers, I think live TV will be important in many ways, shapes and forms. We are very excited about this partnership.
Major U.S. cellphone carriers have already started TV broadcasts, and trials are underway in many countries around the world. Handset makers Nokia and Sony Ericsson have recently announced a joint mobile TV development program.
Microsoft also provides software to Verizon Wireless, which has been offering its Vcast TV service in the United States since early 2005.
Virgin Mobile’s launch was announced on the second day of the 3GSM World Congress in Spain, one of the world’s largest mobile telecommunications trade shows.
Scores of exhibitors at 3GSM are showcasing mobile TV technology, which telecom carriers’ hope will unlock new sources of revenue and provide a return on their massive investments in third-generation phones and infrastructure.
Operators are upgrading their networks to cope with the increased demands of new services like video and music streaming and Internet browsing. T-Mobile Chief Executive Rene Obermann told a news conference here that mobile access will become the primary way of reaching the Internet.
The German operator, owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, said it will launch its first high-speed mobile broadband service running at 1.8 megabits per second this quarter–comparable with speeds over cable and DSL–and hopes to increase connection speeds more than tenfold to 20 megabits per second by the end of the decade.
Also, Microsoft Corp. announced a push to increase its share of the mobile software market.
Microsoft’s Ballmer said a new mobile version of Communicator, an instant-messaging application, also offering Internet voice calls.
Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software trails rival Symbian in the market for smartphone operating systems, and Microsoft is trying to increase its share by leveraging its dominance in e-mail and calendar software for servers and PCs.
Microsoft’s involvement with the BT Movio service is important because it is yet another validation of the entire mobile TV market, some analysts say.
There has been some question about whether or not the mobile TV market would be big or not, said Iain Gillott, president of iGR, a market research firm specializing in mobile and wireless networks. "But the involvement of Microsoft legitimizes the market in a way."
There has been a lot of talk and hype surrounding mobile TV over the past year. So far, mobile-TV services have not been a big hit with consumers. But mobile operators are looking at mobile TV as a big money maker for the future as prices for voice minutes continue to drop. They hope that people will turn on their phones and pay a premium to watch news clips, mini soap operas and sports clips.
In the United States, Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless and Sprint Nextel are already offering mobile TV service. But most experts agree that current 3G, or third-generation, technology would not be sufficient to handle large volumes of live TV viewing. As a result, several companies, including BT, are developing separate networks that can handle video traffic.
While BT uses a technology called DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), others, such as Qualcomm’s MediaFlo division and Crown Castle’s Modeo subsidiary, use different technology. Modeo uses a technology called DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handhelds), which is very similar to DAB. MediaFlo is developing a homegrown technology it calls Flo. Verizon has already indicated that it plans to work with MediaFlo once its network is finished later this year.
Handset makers are also preparing for the mobile TV market. In January, Motorola, Nokia and Intel formed an alliance to support DVB-H technology. Samsung and MediaFlo demonstrated the Flo technology at the Consumer Electronics show last month.
While BT’s and Virgin’s plans have already been disclosed, the announcement at the 3GSM World Conference in Barcelona was the first time Microsoft’s affiliation with the service had been made public. Microsoft has been working for months with BT and Virgin Wireless to provide necessary software for packaging and viewing the TV content shown on mobile phones.
In the end, it will be consumers who ultimately decide if watching TV on a tiny screen is really worth it.