One step closer to mobile TV

This year’s TelcoTV conference — kicking off today in Anaheim, Calif. — has service providers looking beyond the living room. The show, typically centered on IPTV and broadband, is tackling the bigger picture of how the Internet, over-the-top video, long-tail content and, especially, mobile devices are changing how television is delivered.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition demonstrated this week that one industry segment, local broadcasters, already is changing how they deliver TV. Two local Chicago broadcasters, ION Media Networks and Fox Television, held successful mobile digital TV demonstrations in the downtown market, confirming that they can deliver a number of local and live broadcasts over a variety of mobile devices and phones. The service, which uses a draft of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) mobile TV standard, could give other mobile TV providers a run for their money.

While OMVC-affiliated broadcasters are still only trialing the technology, they could have definite advantages over their mobile TV–only counterparts such as MediaFLO. MediaFLO works via Qualcomm’s internally developed forward link only (FLO) technology, which Qualcomm had to build from scratch. In addition, MediaFLO had to acquire 700 MHz spectrum, build its transmitters in those markets, arrange for programming distribution, and finally negotiate the rights and licensing agreements for the programs themselves. Unlike local broadcasters, which carry national programming through their affiliate agreements with the likes of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, mobile TV operators have to license individual shows and TV rights anew. For instance, though MediaFLO has been live for two years, it only recently acquired the rights to broadcast NFL games — and only with the provision that the league retains the right to block out certain games or coverage.

Conversely local broadcasters already have their infrastructure in place. They’re using the same television feed, just broadcasting it over a separate chunk of their DTV spectrum. They use the same transmitters and broadcast infrastructure — the only upgrade required being the transcoding equipment to produce the mobile version of the broadcast. And they have content licensing agreements already in place. Though there may be some minor renegotiation of licensing agreements necessary to take into account the new mobile medium, there fundamentally is little difference between the mobile broadcast and the fixed one. They cover the same market and reach the same people at the same time with the same content. The local broadcasters also can provide what national mobile TV providers have been unable to offer: local programming.