Mobile TV: at a critical point now?
By Ben Robinson on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 1:48 PM PST In Mobile TV, The Digital Life
The N96 is a great handset for Mobile TV
Mobile TV seems to have been bubbling away at a simmer for a number of years now. As early back as 2004, there was a lot of noise about how TV services could be offered.. As an early adopter myself, and working for device vendors and network operators, I got to try a lot of the services out there – right from 5 frames-per-second GPRS streaming, through to the newer broadcast variants such as MediaFLO and DVB-H.
The problem has never been with the TV service as such – it’s widely accepted that most people would use it on a semi-regular basis, if the content and quality were good enough, and, if the PRICE were right. And that’s really been the stumbling block for a while.
Operators, or service providers, have been looking at the cost (both CAPEX and OPEX-wise) of deploying a Mobile TV infrastructure (including broadcast), and found it’s hugely expensive. They have also been looking at the revenues they would get back, comparing TV services to those terrestrial/satellite/cable home services, and found that in many cases, the business model doesn’t stack up. Even the oft-mooted Mobile Advertising can’t fill the gap.
So we have a weird stand-off, where Operators would considering deploying a service but largely won’t because COSTS > PROFIT, at least for the short and medium-term. Sure, a few Operators have tried, but they have only served to prove the point for the others. Even those which are profitable, I would bet are not seeing major contribution to ARPU from Mobile TV.
The handset vendors have occupied a strange position too – a number of notables have invested in providing the handsets (and continue to), but the lack of choice (and relative high cost), mean that they haven’t been able to shift volume units in many cases. It’s been left to those with the bespoke engineering ability, or the scale of operations, to continue drip-feeding the market.
Now that we have the global economic downturn, the idea of a (broadcast) Mobile TV network is even less attractive – Operators can’t be seen to be spending something like $500m+ on network infrastructure for TV, when the revenue-generating upgrades to network tech such as 3.5G, HSPA+, and LTE are all available and waiting for roll-out. In this scenario, peoples’ need to be connected, outweighs the need to be entertained.
So what could happen? Well, I genuinely think that the next couple of years could be make-or-break for broadcast Mobile TV as we know it – the window of opportunity is decreasing, and soon we’ll have high-bandwidth IP networks that can stream channels with multicasting and good quality. At that point, assuming wide network coverage, the need for broadcast technologies declines a great deal. And with the additional pressure on the economy that is existing, it might just encourage Operator to wait for the next big thing (4G?), missing that window altogether. If progressive-download/streaming services running on these networks continue to improve their user experience, we might even see today’s Mobile broadcast TV completely eclipsed.
It’s clear that TVoIP (TV over IP) is the way forward for mobile TV. The audiences for the various proprietary OTA-handset solutions are too fragmented and too small for advertisers to make the effort. PPV and subscription models have been DOA. TVoIP allows content providers to enter the mobile space with essentially zero capex and variable opex. They only pay for the bandwidth consumed as the audience grows. It will be years before IP networks (Wimax or LTE) can make the TV anywhere promise. But Wifi and 3G offer plenty of coverage for plenty people today.
I have another issue when mobile TV finally arrives….and can be viewed in high speed vehicles. Will everyone be watching TV on their mobile while driving on the Interstate? No but lots will and the accident count is going to soar. It will make the problem of distracted drivers we have today pale in comparison.
You’re missing two things:
First, the series of operations required to watch IPTV on a handset — booting up the browser, finding the website, waiting for the video to load up, and dealing with WiFi networks fading in or out (or paying carriers data rates) — is too much trouble. Regular folks just want to watch TV. They want to hit a button that says “TV” or “on” and…presto!…there’s Brian Williams. In Asia, this is exactly what people do. They buy a handset that costs about US$100, charge it up, and watch broadcast — over the air, even analog (visit http://www.Telegent.com) –TV. There are no intermediate steps, no subscription required, no data network services. Which brings me to my second point.
Second, broadcast mobile TV is where the real action is. When the US makes the switch to digital, broadcasters will be able to use the same transmission infrastructure to broadcast to mobile devices equipped with ATSC tuners (visit http://www.openmobilevideo.com). Potentially, this offers US over-the-air TV a whole new lease on life. The fly in the ointment is that, unlike in Asia, US handset sales are controlled by carriers, who have no interest in handsets that give you free TV. So there’s a market problem, but this may increase demand for open handsets.