By Carl Townsend
March 26th, 2007

What happens when you take two of the most popular technologies in the last 50 years - television and the cell phone - and bring them together?  Furthermore, what if you could simplify the delivery and management of that experience through a single, global wireless broadband standard? 

This week at CTIA in Orlando, Florida, a California-based company will be demonstrating television over a mobile WiMAX network.  Last August, the company announced its support for mobile WiMAX and that is was working to integrate it into a broad range of emerging video and television technologies.  It also offered a demonstration earlier this year at CES in Las Vegas.

"One of the things we are showing is how well suited WiMAX is for television and video," says MobiTV's CTO Kay Johansson.  "WIMAX gives you true mobile internet with streaming as high as 1Mbps which delivers very good quality video to a number of devices including mobile phones, PCs and PDAs."

So what exactly are MobiTV subscribers watching?  "We are seeing quite a bit of live TV as well as video on demand," says Johansson.  "Let's say you have 10 minutes and you want to catch up on the latest news, sports or music videos.  You bring it up on your device and it's all right there.  Overall what we are seeing is that the TV has become more personal and people want to take that experience with them."      

Essentially what MobiTV provides is managed hosted application service for carriers that are looking to provide video services to their users.  For example, if a carrier decides it wants to offer television and mobile video to its users, then MobiTV can provide a complete, integrated turn-key solution from satellite feeds to helping carries ensure that their subscriber devices work properly.  "The advantage of what we provide is not in the technology per se, but in the complete managed solution that we provide.  We work with the carriers to help them understand the possibilities of the distribution of mobile content."

MobiTV first launched its service in 2003 and has grown to over 2 million subscribers as of last month, more than doubling its base in a year.  Its subscribers pay monthly fees to access more than 100 channels world-wide and over 40 in the US.

The company also functions as a content aggregator and has signed hundreds of deals with content providers.  The company recently signed a deal with NBC Universal to make prime-time shows such as "The Office" on an ad-free per episode charge.

The company runs a state-of-the-art network operations center where it manages all aspects of content delivery and quality.  "A lot of our intellectual IP has been put into delivering a great customer experience and controlling the quality of service", says Johansson.  "We are essentially technology agnostic when it comes to the delivery method.  We have delivered our technology over many types of networks including DVB-H and TD-CDMA, but have done more cellular because that is where the customers are." 

"The strongest differentiator for WiMAX is not necessarily the performance improvements that it enables, but rather the reduced cost and ease of deployment that it provides", says Johansson.  "There is still a tremendous amount of network capacity on 3G networks.  All other factors being equal, a WiMAX network with be cheaper to deploy than a traditional UMTS or EVDO-A network due to the type of components being utilized."

WiMAX also offers advantages in the delivery method of the content based on user demand.  "There's often a big mis-understandings in the industry on who MobiTV is" says Johansson.  "Some think we are the 'unicast' guys and Medioflo are the broadcast guys." 

In the content delivery world, unicast refers to the transmission of content or data packets to a singe end user, such as a customer requesting video on demand services.  Broadcast technologies, such as those used by Qualcom's MedioFlo and DVB-H transmit to many different users simultaneously.  "The truth is that with technologies like WiMAX we have the ability to manage to both models depending on user demand thereby optimizing bandwidth requirements", says Johansson.

WiMAX also provides a single network to seamlessly manage interactive video and advertising services.  "With traditional broadcast technologies such as Medioflo and DVB-H, you need a backchannel to handle the interaction", says Johansson.  "This can typically be done with the existing data services, but WiMAX simplifies this through its full-duplex, bi-directional delivery capabilities.  This provides for simpler integration and deployment from the carrier perspective."

Carriers are finding advertising and other services increasing popular as the look to maximize their ARPU (average revenue per unit).  For example, a user watching a music video could be offered the opportunity to instantly purchase the ring-tone of that artist.  For advertisers, users can be given the option of selecting a longer form of an advertisement or request the nearest location of the store.

"WiMAX is a key strategic technology that enables a better Mobile TV experience, says Johansson".  "WiMAX is designed for the ground-up for high bandwidth application and takes all the best parts of Wi-FI -simplicity of deployment and cellule's scalability, security, and roaming an provides them into one network".