TV Over 3G
I haven’t been that impressed by efforts to offer TV to mobile phones so far, though some insist that it’s going to be big business. Over in Japan, NTT DoCoMo is getting ready to launch their own TV over 3G solution. It sounds like they’ll have some very basic TiVo-like functionality (something we ask for every time this is discussed) as the offering will include the ability to watch “archived” programs. Meanwhile, just in time for this announcement, comes the prediction that there will be 120 million people watching TV over cellular connections by 2010. It seems a bit early to be predicting that much take-up that quickly – especially considering there’s been very little proof of concept to this point. What’s interesting (and what no one seems to talk about) is how TV-over-cellular may change things. Everyone focuses on the ability of people to watch TV on their mobile phones – but if the technology is good enough, TV over cellular could be a replacement option for cable TV. Already we have telcos experimenting with TV-over-DSL – so why not full TV-over-cellular? Perhaps the focus shouldn’t be so much on people watching TV over the handsets, but on people using a cellular connection to bring TV to their full-sized televisions. Of course, there are some who say that all television is moving onto the internet anyway, in which case (once again!) we’d have a situation where the content and the connection are two totally separate issues.
Filed Under: 3g
