Crown Castle International Corp.’s media subsidiary debuted a new name and marketing campaign amid details about its plans to use its tower network and unencumbered spectrum rights to launch live mobile TV in the nation’s top 30 markets, including a launch in New York City this year.
The company also said it plans to deliver video and audio services to a wide range of mobile devices, including cars. Crown Castle is the nation’s second-largest tower company with more than 12,000 towers across the country.
As part of its plans, Crown Castle Mobile Media announced that it’s changing its name to Modeo L.L.C.
The company explained that it plans to launch live mobile TV in a few select markets this year, including New York City, and will continue turning on new markets throughout 2007. Modeo said its Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld mobile broadcast network can deliver live video and audio channels, and will allow subscribers to download dozens of video podcasts and hundreds of audio podcasts to their mobile devices on a weekly basis.
“Our marketing campaign, `Modeo: For the love of TV,’ emphasizes our focus on providing a fun and easy-to-use service that delivers popular news, sports, music and entertainment to a broad range of mobile devices including cell phones, laptops, portable media players, personal digital assistants and more,” said Michael Schueppert, president of Modeo.
Verizon Wireless recently announced plans to use Qualcomm Inc.’s proprietary MediaFlo mobile TV offering. Schueppert said in a telephone interview that Modeo does not yet have a carrier agreement for its open-standard, DVB-H-based mobile TV offering, but he said that “it’s entirely possible that Modeo and MediaFlo will not be direct substitutes for each other.”
Schueppert explained that Modeo’s network architecture is different from Qualcomm’s MediaFlo offering. He said the high-power MediaFlo network relies on fewer tower sites than Modeo’s, which uses more sites at lower costs. Schueppert also noted that Modeo’s mobile TV launch plans include more markets than those announced by Qualcomm’s MediaFlo subsidiary.
Proponents of both technologies showed their wares at last week’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Qualcomm, the sole chip provider for its MediaFlo technology, has support from handset vendors Kyocera Wireless Corp., LG Electronics Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sanyo Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp. and others. Indeed, LG and Samsung both showed off MediaFlo handsets at CES.
Modeo’s DVB-H technology is supported by Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp. and others. Modeo demonstrated its mobile TV service using devices from Motorola and Nokia.
Schueppert said Modeo’s investment in its live mobile TV network should total about $500 million, while Qualcomm has said that its investment in MediaFlo should hit around $800 million.
Also at CES, Texas Instruments Inc. announced the launch of its latest mobile TV single-chip solution for handsets, which the company said supports the DVB-H standard and integrates a tuner and demodulator using one piece of silicon. TI touted its new chip as both inexpensive and power efficient. The company said its “Hollywood” chips are being shipped to handset manufacturers now and should be in the hands of consumers later this year.
“We’ve moved aggressively to provide consumers with the ability to experience Hollywood in the palm of their hands,” said Gilles Delfassy, senior vice president and general manager of Wireless Terminals at TI. “Mobile TV is expected to boost 3G adoption, much like the camera phones did for the 2.5G market, and add significant new revenue to both television broadcasters and mobile-phone operators.”
