Rallying behind mobile TV

The CTIA Wireless show and National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) both held in Las Vegas this month are inherently different shows. One focuses solely on the (albeit increasingly harder to define) wireless industry, while the other narrows in on the digital media and content market. Typically, one technology that ties them together is mobile TV. Both industry segments have a vested interest in seeing the still-nascent service take off -- as such, it’s usually a hot topic on both show floors…usually. This year, however, one show was noticeably more excited about mobile TV’s potential than the other. At CTIA, the mobile service was all but absent from carrier’s talking points, with the exception of AT&T promising to launch services by May. The broadcasters and standards bodies at NAB, however, could not say enough about mobile TV’s shining promise.

With a multitude of other applications and services to choose from, carriers at CTIA most likely stayed away from mobile TV because of its uncertain business model. Subscribers’ interest has failed to pick up, and carriers can’t yet find a foolproof plan to monetize the service. Subscription models have won out to date, but as flat-rate pricing plans become more widely adopted and consumers get feed up with being nickled and dimed, the business model is growing less certain.

Broadcasters at NAB were much more optimistic about the service, with many quick to deem 2008 the year of mobile TV. The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) promised the service by the digital transition next year, hoping to give pioneer Qualcomm’s Media FLO a run for its money. Taking the opposite view, the FLO Forum, presided by Qualcomm VP of engineering Kamil Grajski, asked the question, why can’t we all just get along? His viewpoint was that multimodal handsets will eventually allow many standards to coexist in the same devices.

OMVC pointed out that there is a potential $2 billion in annual revenue just waiting to be claimed if they can deliver mobile TV services as quickly as possible. The organization also admitted that they haven’t gotten the carrier’s perspective on this yet, stating that it was premature to ask before the service is fully standardized. Their expectation was, however, that carriers would embrace the service and the standard because it uses their existing spectrum and comes straight from the broadcasters, ultimately making it cheaper for the consumers. If they had checked in with the carriers, they might not be so certain. Business model still trumps everything else.

GoldSpot Media believes it has the answer with its ‘Trial-in-a-Box,’ a prototype unveiled today for evaluating the profitability of targeted, interactive mobile broadcast TV advertising models. CEO Srini Dharmaji said they are the first company to offer this kind of testing environment and, while he admits it will take time, carriers will migrate from a subscription service towards an ad-supported free mobile TV model as they become more attuned to advertising’s potential and the advertisers make the mobile jump as well.

Despite the lack of really significant progress so far, the Yankee Group still forecasts the global mobile TV and video to be an $11 billion arena by 2012. While the standards are slowly getting there, the business model is clearly not, yet. Advertising experimentation might be a good starting point, but a lot of work still needs to be done to appease everyone in the value chain. It will take more than just broadcasters rallying behind the service to make it a reality.

Email me at sreedy@telephonyonline.com.