MobiTV going retail

MobiTV is striking out its own, trying its hand at the retail market. Company officials said they are planning a major commercial product launch that will target all PC users, allowing customers to view MobiTV's streaming video channels on laptops at Wi-Fi hot spots on their home PCs and even at work.

Paul Scanlan, co-founder and chief operating officer, said MobiTV would maintain its cellular TV business as a white-label service, though it plans to move beyond the unicast framework supported on two-way cellular networks to a multicast model using technologies like digital video broadcast-hand-held and IPWireless's new TDtv equipment. But it also wants to explore selling directly to consumers, offering monthly plans and software for PCs, PDAs and other devices with IP Internet connections, Scanlan said.

“For TV on your cell phone, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to move the dial beyond what the carriers want to offer,” Scanlan said. “They're too powerful. But as we move beyond carrier-controlled devices, we see a lot of opportunity.”

MobiTV aggregates, produces, programs and broadcasts dozens of news and entertainment channels, selling them to carriers that bundle them with their video packages and rebrand the service. Last year, MobiTV launched over Wi-Fi-enabled Palm devices and began offering retail software for consumers to load into their devices and subscribe directly.