The first public airing of Qualcomm Inc.’s proprietary MediaFlo technology for mobile TV is taking place as the Flo Forum submitted its specification proposal for the Flo air interface between towers and devices to the Telecommunications Industry Association subcommittee TR-47.
The Flo Forum, led by Qualcomm and its MediaFlo subsidiary, came to life last July as several companies lined up behind Qualcomm to jointly promote global standardization of the company’s proprietary Flo technology for multicasting broadcast-quality video. 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.
In addition, Verizon Wireless recently announced plans to offer MediaFlo’s mobile TV service.
MediaFlo technology competes with Europe’s Digital Video Broadcast-H open standard, which has support from Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp., Texas Instruments Inc., Samsung and Modeo L.L.C., the Crown Castle International Corp. media subsidiary.
Modeo announced plans to use Crown Castle’s tower network and spectrum rights to launch live DVB-H mobile TV in the nation’s top 30 markets, including a launch in New York City this year.
The Flo Forum explained that the TR-47 engineering committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of terrestrial mobile multimedia multicast standards and said TR-47.1 will be the subcommittee focused on Flo technology standardization.
The Flo Forum also noted that the air-interface specification defines the radio protocols used over the air between the Flo network and a Flo device for the delivery of multicast services.
“The submission of the air-interface specification to the TR-47.1 engineering subcommittee marks a significant milestone in the progress of global Flo technology standardization,” said Kamil Grajski, president of the Flo Forum. “The Flo Forum is preparing additional specifications, including minimum performance specifications for Flo devices and Flo transmitters. These are expected to be ready for submission to standards development organizations in early 2006.”
Kamil said that while Flo technology was designed specifically to deliver high-quality video streaming to handsets, DVB-H was developed for terrestrial applications and then adapted for handsets.
“The technical submission to the TR-47.1 subcommittee marks a first step towards embracing this technology as a TIA standard,” said Dan Bart, senior vice president of Standards and Special Projects at TIA. “We look forward to working with the Flo Forum as the specification of the TIA standard progresses. TIA is eager to standardize the technologies used for terrestrial mobile multimedia multicast.” RCR
