MediaFLO planning to go big in the US next year…
By Ben Robinson on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 3:18 PM PST In MediaFLO
We don’t tend to get quite as much MediaFLO-related news in to the office here at IntoMobile, so when we do see something, it’s nice to make mention of it:
MediaFLO is hoping to dramatically increase its coverage next year — adding more than 40 cities to its footprint — after the Feb. 17 switchover to all-digital broadcasts by full-power TV stations. Today, it provides live, mobile multichannel services through AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless in 58 markets. Two to three months after the DTV transition, MediaFLO should have commercial service up and running in Boston, Houston, San Francisco and Miami, which are the four markets out of the top 20 where the service is currently unavailable, according to Matt Milne, senior vice president of strategy.
The current service with AT&T and Verizon has (apparently) well over 100K subs, and offers a mixture of full-length simulcast, plus “for-mobile” linear channels. With a daily watch average of over 20 mins, it’s interesting to see that Live TV can provide “snackable” (i.e. short) content too – not something I would have initially thought could be the case, as compared with on-demand 3G streaming.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, news and sports are the most popular, and I guess if you want breaking news or scores, then live has got to be the way to go…
What will be fascinating is how the providers and MediaFLO grows the channel line-up. Within available bandwidth, there are supposed to be 22 channels provided for, of which only 15 (including some temporary channels) are being used. I’d go sport…sport…sport….etc!
The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, could be the US broadcasters that are pushing along with a plan to do FTA mobile TV. Analogous with DVB-T in Germany (which utilises the existing terrestrial service), this solution utilises the existing US terrestrial standard of ATSC – so expect to see (another) prominent broadcast Mobile TV standard, plus some custom handsets goodness!
[Via: Multichannel.com]
