The BBC Trust is apparently consulting on plans to syndicate all its national TV and radio services across 3G networks for mobile devices. Execs are going to propose to make the arrangement a permanent one after a 12-month trial, which ended in April this year.

MNOs Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Orange, 3UK and T-mobile (NYSE: DT) would distribute the channels as part of their Mobile TV services. The BBC believes the market for Mobile TV is still unproven, but believes it’s involvement could drive things forward.

Interestingly, the BBC’s policy on allowing access to their services (which is that it should be on the lowest possible tier of charging) would mean “zero-rated” costing for data usage, and a very minimal subscription charge (at least that’s my reading of it).

[Via: digitalspy.co.uk]

Sistema Mass Media (SMM) has chosen a suite of NDS technologies to secure and manage both its IPTV and mobile TV platforms – resulting in the delivery of a true convergence play for it’s subscriber services. NDS’s Unified Headend(TM) will cover set-top boxes, PCs, and a variety of Mobile devices.

The NDS Unified Headend(TM) integrates conditional access (CA), Digital Rights Management (DRM) and third party applications, allowing operators to deliver secure broadcast and Video-On-Demand (VOD) services to a variety of devices – set-top boxes (STBs), mobile phones, PCs, Portable Media Players (PMPs) and digital video recorders (DVRs). SMM will use the NDS Unified Headend to deliver content to STBs, PCs and mobile devices with optimum operational efficiency, using a single system to control content distribution.

The Mobile TV part of the offering will be DVB-H (yay!), and launch in 16 cities that have populations over 1 million. Because SMM is a broadcaster, the DVB-H service will be MNO-independent.

VideoGuard Mobile supports both the Open Security Framework (OSF) and OMA BCAST smartcard profile standards and offers a clear and seamless migration path between both. VideoGuard Mobile is fully compliant with DVB-H, DVB-SH, DMB, MediaFLO, CMMB and STIMI standards.

It’s likely that the devices will be from Samsung, LG, and Gigabyte (what no Nokia (NYSE: NOK)??).

[Via: marketwatch.com]

The three MNOs in Singapore, M1, SingTel and StarHub, along with the national broadcaster MediaCorp, are going to jointly condut a consumber Mobile TV trial using DVB-H next month. During the trial, 300 customers (across the MNOs) will be able to see six dedicated channels.  The handset on offer will be (slightly unsurprisingly) the Samsung P960 by the way.

Having travelled to Singapore to sell Mobile TV before myself, my take is that this trial is a very “early stages” joint effort, to work out whether broadcast Mobile TV is worth doing. On the upside for Singapore, there is at least a relatively defined geographical area, which isn’t too large – and splitting that cost three ways makes a lot of sense. We all await the results of the trial…..

[Via: Cellular News]

Following from my last post about the Sharp GX10i, I am following up with another fond memory – this time of the Samsung SGH-i300. Now, what made this device “special” was the fact that it was one of the first to have a mini-HD in it – in this case, a not inconseqential 3GB!

Interestingly, I had one of these devices – back then, I was a Windows Mobile addict, and used to be a big fan of Activesync’s seamless PC to device updating. The SGH-i300 was a WinMo device, and as such seemed a logical progression. The device’s scroll-wheel was also quite novel, and all went well until a couple of weeks in when I accidentally dropped the device on a carpet – and from not very high either. There was zero damage externally, but the device turned off – not a good sign.

Suffice to say, it never turned on again, and likely culrpit – the HD! Oddly, I’d noticed on rebooting the device previously that startup seemed to require the spin-up of the HD (perhaps to read files or similar), so the fact the HD was dead meant the device was dead! Alas poor i300, I knew him well…..

Anyone else have this device?

3 has announced sales of over 1m USB mobile broadband dongles to customers across the UK, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Austria. This has been due, in no small part, to the very attractive cost vs data propositions they have come up with:

Also, a new dongle is now available – the Huawei E160G is now available in black and white, and has a built-in Micro-SD mem card slot that can take up to 4GB capacity. It will cost PAYG customers £99.99, and either free or £49.99 (dependent on package) for contract customers.

[Via: Mobile Choice]

China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) has now started it’s marketing push for a public beta of 3G telephony services, hinting that full deployment may be available soon after that little sporting event called the Olympics!

As we’ve reported on before, the dominant tecnology for 3G in China is not going to be the otherwise globally-accepted WCDMA, but in fact China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access).

TD-SCDMA was developed as part of a larger Chinese effort to create technology standards that would not require the payment of royalties to foreign patent holders. It is not compatible with any other 3G standard, and China’s carriers have not indicated they will support any other 3G standard. However, given the size of China’s domestic mobile market — about 550 million users — even 10 percent penetration would give TD-SCDMA more users than in many nations.

This latest advancement in trialling comes after 3 years of trials, in which various sample groups and technologies have been tested. There are six handsets involved in the current trial:

• Dopod s700
• Motorola (NYSE: MOT)’s l800t
• Haixin T66
• LG KD876
• Lenovo (OTCPK: LNVGY)’s TD800
• Samsung i688

Interestingly, the i688 is one of 4 models that Samsung gave to the “Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG)” for use during the Olympics next month – Samsung is also an official sponsor. Overall, 15,000 devices have been supplied – clearly there is a massive P.O. (purchase order) if Samsung is selected as a key provider, so what’s 15K devices between friends!?

[Via: PCworld.com]

Yes it’s been some years since we saw the infamous Ghettoblaster being carried about – apart from the occasional group of disenfranchised youths sat on steps listening to one, it’s very rare we see them. Much more common is the generic “boy-racer” who has pimped his Fiesta to have a “sound system” (I believe youngsters are calling it In-Car Enterntainment these days….), and so is blaring out tracks as he crawls by….

…. but now there is a new menace – this one isn’t carrying a 400kg boombox, or “rolling on dubs” (not that you could get 20″ alloys on a Fiesta!), but instead he/she is on foot. And their weapon of choice – you got it – the Mobile!

Given the preponderance of Mobile devices with at least a reasonable speaker housed in them, it is now not uncommon to see a teenager wandering around with a tinny version of some UK Grime star’s latest track echoing out of their phone. The phones are typically carried in the hand – far enough away from the owner’s ears to save them from going deaf, but close enough to the rest of the world to annoy the living hell out of us!

I suppose I shouldn’t complain – a percentage of this music has been downloaded from Operators, service providers and suchlike – however, it’s got to the point where the attitude that comes along with these Mobile-carrying youths has gotten to be a bad one. A really bad one.

First of all there is the selfishness/lack of consideration that others may not want to listen to their “music”, and the secondly the fact when confronted about it, the first two words out of their mouths usually begin with “F” and “O”! I wonder whether in fact I am alone in noticing this, and, whether this is occuring to such an extent in other countries….

… so come on IntoMobile readers – let us know which country you are living in, and what your experiences of this heinous trend are….

[Ghettoblaster image via: pocketcalculatorshow.com]

Bollywood actress Neetu Chandra has become brand ambassador for Mobile Games company “7 Seas Technologies Ltd”, who have launched a series of seven 3D Mobile games. The games cross a variety of genres such as driving, puzzle, and Adventure – list below :

• 3D Sodoku
• Planets of Sodoku 3D
• Neetu – The Alien Killer
• Great Elude
• Treasure Trove 3D
• Derby 3D
• Kraze

In one of the games (guess which one), Neetu actually appears (Answer: Neetu – The Alien Killer!). I thought it would be important for readers to see a pic or two of Neetu, just for reference :

[Via: Bollypad.com]

Carphone Warehouse (CPW) is changing it’s branding with a new softer logo, and getting rid of the “Mowbli” icon (above), reports Mobile Today. CPW is looking to relaunch itself as a mobile and laptop provider, and as such considers Mowbli not to be relevant. Apparently there will be a new hand-drawn logo with “doodle” design, that will feature on TV and in Magazines/Newspapers. The official change will occur in August.

The focus on mobile broadband (which is a high-margin, high-volume commodity) is currently where CPW’s focus lies – to the extent that all staff have been sent on training regarding the selling of the hardware and associated service.

[Via: Mobile Today]

Market Research specialist GfK has said that in sales for June 2008, £1m of Mobile speakers have been sold – compared with just £146,000 in May 2007! In a related stat, handsets with MP3 players and/or FM Radios now account for 65% of the market, which has increased from 44% last year.

This research dovetails in nicely with the launch of Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s “Comes with Music” and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD)’s unlimited music service, powered by Omnifone – clearly, if you are going to download the tracks you are going to play them – and that’s either going to be via headphones, or speakers (it’s just a shame that a percentage of the music-dowloading populous choose to blare tracks out of their mobile device internal speaker, typically whilst walking along!)

Obviously device feature-sets have been growing too, with more storage possible on-device (either internally, or on memory card), higher-spec “player” apps, and in some cases, specialised audio circuitry.

The research provided by GfK shows that the average price of speakers was doubling since last year, which could mean a lot of things – I’d like to think it means consumers were/are paying more for higher fidelity and power output. However, bundling speakers with handset is a very cheap and popular way for end-users to get the hardware.

As digi-downloads grow exponentially, expect to see much more of this kind of news – actually scratch that… you won’t see it, you’ll hear about it!

[Via: Mobile Today]