Crown Castle International Corp.’s plan to launch its Modeo mobile TV networks in major U.S. markets took an apparent blow as Modeo’s President Michael Schueppert stepped down without any explanation from Crown Castle or Modeo.
Schueppert’s resignation was disclosed in a Dec. 1 government filing stating that he will leave the company by Dec. 31.
Late Friday the company announced that Michael Ramke was named interim president of
the company for the foreseeable future, effective Jan. 1. Ramke had been Modeo’s vice president of marketing and business development and has worked with Modeo since its inception.
The moves come as Crown Castle faces a number of challenges on the mobile TV front. Verizon Wireless has already selected rival Qualcomm Inc.’s MediaFLO network to service its mobile TV desires, and Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. are currently trialing the MediaFLO offering. T-Mobile USA is also rumored to be trialing Aloha Partners’ Hiwire mobile TV effort.
One industry observer noted that the executive shakeup could spell the end to Modeo’s efforts.
“This is beginning of the end for Modeo,” predicted ABI Research analyst Clint Wheelock. “The writing is on the wall-three mobile broadcast service providers can’t survive in the U.S. and Modeo is the weak one of the bunch.”
Indeed, Crown Castle’s plan now appears to be to going it alone. The company plans to launch its DVB-H-based mobile TV network in New York City without the support of a wireless carrier. The company plans to sell an unlocked GSM phone in support of its Modeo-branded mobile TV service. Crown Castle’s stated goal is to launch 30 markets with DVB-H service by the end of next year.
“Modeo is excited about our upcoming launch of our live mobile TV service in New York,” the company stated in an e-mail. “We are focusing our efforts on leading the mobile TV industry beyond the trial phase with the nation’s first commercial quality mobile TV network.”
The company went on to say that it’s planning to have a live broadcast signal at the Consumer Electronics Show in January to demonstrate its service with technology partners.
Despite the positive spin, Wheelock added that Modeo’s options are limited. “They could sell their assets to another party, or shut down operations altogether,” Wheelock said. “They could try to push on for a while longer, but my gut feeling is that the carrier decisions are far enough along based on the trials they’ve announced. It’s probably not going to happen for Modeo at this point. MediaFlo has the strongest position, though Hiwire is in a strong position as well.”
MediaFLO trial details
Meanwhile, Qualcomm dished technical details about its two-month MediaFLO trial in Cambridge, England, with British Sky Broadcasting Ltd., saying the one-way, streaming technology in general either met or exceeded the company’s previous performance claims.
Qualcomm said the trial featured 11 channels from the BSkyB’s content menu delivered to non-commercial Qualcomm devices. Factors such as total throughput, network acquisition, channel switching times, layered modulation and video-codec performance were evaluated in the field as well as in a lab.
“Testing demonstrated that MediaFLO is capable of supporting 20 channels of QVGA video and stereo audio in a single 5-megahertz spectrum allocation,” stated the company. “This performance represents a 20-percent increase in channels relative to prior performance claims of 20 video channels per 6 MHz channel.”
Qualcomm quoted testers as having commented that “the picture quality is very good, small text is clear and movement is smooth.”
Other results divulged by Qualcomm include:
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- In tests measuring network acquisition, the MediaFLO device acquired the MediaFLO channel guide in an average of 2 seconds.
Measurements of channel-switching time yielded an average time of less than 1.5 seconds.
Furthermore, the company claims that its MediaFLO system can trade off half of its channels for twice the coverage area per transmitter.
Robin Crossly, strategy adviser of technology for BSkyB, opined: “This was a thorough test of the technology’s capabilities, yielding encouraging results, and confirms Qualcomm’s performance claims about the MediaFLO system.”
Verizon should launch MediaFLO service early next year.