Mobile TV trials ends in Singapore

After a whopping 18 months, the Singapore Digital’s TV2GO Mobly TV trial finished at the end of November – ready for a commercial launch. The trial allowed e2e testing of the M-TV infrastructure needed, plus services too, which has allowed Singapore Digital to gather lots of Market Research data – nice.

According to Singapore Digital CEO Giulio Dorrucci, the TV2GO trial has revealed a great deal about how mobile TV technology performs in high-density living environments, and the challenge of providing high-quality coverage indoors.

You might already know that DVB-H has been designed to be both battery-efficient, but also to cope with (lots of) buildings – something that terrestrial tranmissions historically are not very good at. Ironically, most tests to-date have shown that people watch most Mobile TV, of any format, at home!

The TV2GO trial also did another important thing – made it free. As I just said in another post, FTA trials and/or live services have got to be in consideration for a stimulus of a Mobile TV service (just don’t ask me how to make money from it…. I won’t tell you without a big fat consultancy fee )

Content providers have included CNBC, Bloomberg, Disney, ESPN and WOWTV by Kamera; plus viewers could also experience interactive chat-room services, on-demand videos and web-links, teletext-to-mobile, and real-time voting on reality TV shows. Vital to the success of the trial was the expertise of technology partners Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Sofia Digital, and integration partner, NCS.

The live service could/would/should be progressing further in 2009, although no launch date (at least that I am aware of) has been given.

[Original story via: Cellular news]