The dedicated tower network to be built by Qualcomm's
MediaFLO USA subsidiary should give US carriers a smooth road for
rolling out mobile multimedia services, though it may be some time
before they embrace the idea.
Qualcomm, the chip and technology supplier that pioneered CDMA
(Code Division Multiple Access) mobile phones and infrastructure,
announced that it holds radio spectrum nationwide in the 700MHz
range and plans to build a network of transmitters to send video
and audio content to mobile phones.
Through MediaFLO, which is intended as a future spin-off
company, Qualcomm will offer a service that includes aggregation of
content from multiple sources, middleware for delivering that
content to subscribers, and transmission over the dedicated
network.
The content could include channels for streaming video as well
as for downloadable video and audio. Qualcomm expects trials next
year and commercial service in 2006.
US operators have lagged their counterparts in some other
regions in mobile multimedia, but MediaFLO has the potential to
accelerate the new services here, according to IDC analyst Scott
Ellison.
It could shift the key issue for multimedia from what carriers
need to do - namely, the painful process of "rebanding" their
spectrum - to a task for handset makers, he said. They just need to
develop phones that can receive transmissions from the newly tapped
spectrum.
"I think it's a huge step forward in the US," Ellison said.
Asian manufacturers this year have demonstrated handsets that
can receive terrestrial and satellite TV broadcasts.
In September a group of major handset supplier - Motorola, NEC,
Nokia, Siemens and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications - formed the
Mobile Broadcast Services initiative to collaborate on
specifications to deliver broadcast services to wireless
handsets.
No carrier customers were announced when Qualcomm's plans were
detailed, but the concept has drawn some interest.
Verizon Wireless, which runs a CDMA network, wants to find out
more about the technology and will discuss it with Qualcomm,
spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said.
Sprint, also a CDMA operator, has been talking with Qualcomm
about it but has not made any strategic decisions, according to
spokeswoman Mary Nell Westbrook.
Qualcomm prepared for the service by buying licenses to the
700MHz spectrum in a US Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
auction last year and in another transaction with a licence holder
last month.
Because the network will operate at a lower frequency than
mobile phone networks, each tower will have a longer range and
fewer towers will be needed, said Jeremy James, senior director of
marketing at Qualcomm.
Based on Qualcomm's FLO (Forward Link Only) technology, MediaFLO
will be a send-only service. Subscribers to mobile operators that
use the service will be able to control it via commands sent over
the mobile phone network.
The need for MediaFLO-capable handsets could create an
attractive market for Qualcomm, which is now developing a
standalone FLO chip for phones and later plans to integrate the
capability into the main chipsets for phones.
James was unable to comment on whether the company will license
the technology to other chip makers, as it has with some other CDMA
technologies.
Operators that use MediaFLO also will have to install some new
modules in their infrastructure equipment to communicate with the
network, he added.
IDC's Ellison, who has seen the technology demonstrated, said
going from channel to channel on a MediaFLO-equipped handset was
like flipping through TV stations, with no delay waiting for stored
video clips to load.
The network can transmit video at 30 frames per second, the
typical frame rate of broadcast TV, far beyond current US services
such as Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Services, which runs at 15
frames per second.
With that kind of quality, there is a big potential market for
mobile video here, said Ellison, who dismisses the notion that
Americans just are not interested in advanced mobile services.
Stephen Lawson writes for IDG News Service