AT&T MediaFLO Mobile TV coming ASAP in 2008
By Will Park on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 4:29 PM PST In AT&T, Announcements, Mobile TV, Technologies, Telecommunications
So, the AT&T (NYSE: T) deal with Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) to bring the mobile TV technology MediaFLO to its stable of mobile phones (including a few Nokia (NYSE: NOK) handsets) didn’t exactly help calm the Nokia-Qualcomm battle this year. In fact, the incessant quarreling was probably the reason that AT&T had to delay launching its MediaFLO service until next year.
We’re hearing from AT&T that they are working to bring MediaFLO “as soon as possible” in 2008. The network-tests are reportedly going very, very well” and AT&T wants to “make sure the user experience is absolutely optimal” before they go live with the mobile TV service.
So, network test’s are going honky-dory but AT&T wants to delay the launch of MediaFLO? Sounds like the hold-up might have more to do with Qualcomm and Nokia’s bitter-feelings than AT&T’s desire to ensure “absolutely optimal” performance. You see, Nokia is pushing DVB-H as the mobile TV standard of choice, but AT&T’s MediaFLO deal with Qualcomm will require Nokia to do more business with Qualcomm - something we’re sure Nokia is loath to doing.
In any case, AT&T’s MediaFLO-based mobile TV offering will be pretty much on par with Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless’s VCAST TV service (which has been up and running for, like, ever). Unfortunately, we’re also hearing that AT&T’s prmoise of “advanced MediaFLO capabilities” may not make the cut. Datecasting and music features aren’t in the cards for AT&T’s MediaFLO, sorry.
[Via: MocoNews]
We hope that the Mobile TV is offered via devices which will support multiple technologies for mobile TV.
MediaFLO is one of the successful technologies, but there will be others in USA and Europe such as those based on DVB-H.
Enabling Phones which supporty multiple standards will help the users to also use the services peraps in a different city or country.
This will also prevent the segmentation of Samrtphonnes to diferent categories of tuners.