Worst of the Week: Mobile video explained (but not endorsed)

Hello!
And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWirelessNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So there’s a lot of fun stuff going on in the mobile TV and video markets, and a lot of it is either being ignored by the major players in the wireless industry or by the users that are supposed to be flocking to it in droves. However, it is part of my job to know about and understand this complicated market (can you believe I’m paid to do that?) and so the following is my attempt to unravel and elucidate the situation. Or at the very least pretend to.
Anyway, here we go. As I see it, there are four types of mobile video:
1. On-deck, on-network mobile video
The best examples of such offerings include Verizon Wireless’ Vcast Video service (not to be confused with its Vcast Mobile TV service), AT&T Mobility’s CV offering (which is the AT&Ted name for Cingular Video) and Sprint Nextel’s Sprint TV service.
Such offerings travel over a wireless carrier’s cellular network to phones with the requisite video-playing components, and therefore suffer from slow data connections and low-power cellphone processors. These services are only available from the nation’s major carriers, and offer only the content each carrier has managed to sign deals for.
2. Off-deck, on-network mobile video
This area is much more interesting, and much more complicated, than on-deck mobile video. Some providers working in this area include Sling Media and ROK Entertainment, and in the near future (like next year) this area may include vendors such as Netflix and Hulu.
These offerings rely on carriers’ unlimited data plans, travel over carriers’ cellular networks, and are only used by those who are nerdy enough to actually find them. They also rely on phones that have both browsing and media-playing functions that are not tied to a carrier’s video service.
3. On-deck, off-network mobile video
“On-deck, off-network mobile video?” What? I know, I know, it sounds stupid, but so am I. Anyway, the point is that this is video that travels outside a carrier’s regular cellular network. The best – and so far the only commercially available – example of this is Qualcomm’s MediaFLO network.
See, both Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility want to offer a lot of video to their subscribers, but they don’t want to bog down their voice and data networks doing so. The solution is MediaFLO, which is a network entirely separate – different spectrum band and network technology – from a cellular voice and data network. So basically, a MediaFLO receiver is added to a regular AT&T Mobility or Verizon Wireless phone, and then when people want to watch TV, they switch over to the MediaFLO network.
The fun part about this is that the MediaFLO service is offered through the carriers’ respective decks, so that users have no idea they are flipping onto a different network (one that Qualcomm owns and paid around $800 million to build).
The nice thing about Qualcomm’s MediaFLO (as well as other on-deck, off-network technologies like DVB-H) is that the video quality is much better than content traveling over cellular networks. Of course, the end result is the same: TV on a 2-inch screen.
4. Off-network, off-deck mobile video (this one is my favorite)
So this one isn’t actually commercial yet, and is nowhere near ready for prime time. However, there are a group of players quietly working to launch this, and they could upset the whole mobile video and TV market in the process.
Here’s how it works: The nation’s local TV broadcasters (those guys who put up towers down the street and send signals to every TV with rabbit ears) want to get in on the action, so they are currently looking for a network standard that would allow them to broadcast their TV stuff to mobile devices. (They need a special standard for this because their current standard only works on big, stationary objects like your TV set.)
This group of TV broadcasters (called the Advanced Television Systems Committee) plans to select a technological standard soon, and when they do, presumably the nation’s local TV broadcasters will begin broadcasting mobile TV. Then it will be up to hardware manufacturers (in-car TV makers, digital music player manufacturers and, yes, cellphone companies) to include a receiver in their gadgets for such signals.
This situation sets the stage for a cellphone maker like Nokia to ignore a carrier’s desire for it to support MediaFLO and instead build phones that receive an off-network, off-deck signal from a local TV broadcaster that is, presumably, free. The benefit to Nokia is that they get a happy customer, but is that worth angering a carrier? Time will tell.
I think that’s about it. Simple enough, right? Well, there is one thing I didn’t mention: EchoStar is testing an off-deck, off-network mobile video service that would be broadcast over satellites, but my fingers are tired so that one will have to wait until later.
OK! Enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. And now, some extras:
–According to Iridium’s own press release: “Iridium Satellite kicks off its second annual ‘Test Your Satellite Phone’ Week beginning May 25, 2008. Since its inception in 2007, thousands of emergency workers and first responders have taken the time to ensure that their one certain lifeline in a disaster, their satellite phone, actually works.” I think no extra comments are needed.
–Microsoft last week announced it introduced several new features to its Live Search for Windows Mobile product. Among the new features is a way to view the latest weather conditions. Can you believe it?!?!?! Accessing the latest weather forecast from a cellphone?!?!!? It’s a technological marvel. What an amazing age we live in.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at mdano@crain.com.