Mobile TV this May - Coming to a Handset near you ;-)
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We have all read & heard about, now we can experience it. Mobile TV is coming to India this May. Watch the news, weather forecast favorite serials movies etc straight from your mobile phone. Although the screen size may be small but it’s a great way to be updated and be entertained while traveling or when you are just simply bored.
The Indian mobile market is huge and is growing rapidly. An article from Moneycontrol states ‘India will be second largest market after China’.
I have classified this article into 4 major Categories keeping the subscriber in mind
Who is doing it - Bharti Telesoft; an arm of the Bharti Enterprise is providing its own proprietary technology for GSM mobile service providers expects to have half-a-million subscribers watch TV on mobiles within six months of starting the service in May.
Will it work on ‘MY’ handset? - At the heart of this is a technology that compresses an audio file to four to five times smaller than MP3 (audio format) and delivers a video format up to 10 times more efficient than MPEG-4 (video format), claims Bharti Telesoft.
Ramesh S Krishnan, director, content solutions, told ET, “this compression technology is based on a video coding technology and is designed for standard mobile devices that have relatively low processing power, display resolution and memory capabilities.’’
(basically all Symbian, UIQ and MS smart phone systems) it is no good if you have a Motorola or a BlackBerry phone.
How does it work - users simply have to download the live TV client on their phone using GPRS. Once completed subscribers can scroll trough the menu and watch their choice of channels. The only major difference apart from screen size would be the fact that the content is 20secs behind the normal TV. The other problem would be the battery life of the phone.
How much will it cost - there is no exact figure mentioned but the company reckons that a bouquet of mobile TV channels could be made available for Rs 25 to Rs 50 per month, which I feel is very reasonable considering the amount we pay to our existing cable operators.
On regulatory issues, Mr Krishnan says, “live TV is a VAS, like any other, that uses GPRS as a transport mechanism. There are no additional regulatory requirements as regards offering TV as a VAS.’ ’ Whatever be the issues, very soon a typical couch-potato moment is set to be while on the move.
Currently less than 20 million subscribers in India have activated their GPRS service. The launch of mobile TV would certainly change that figure very quickly.
For all those guys into stocks don’t get so excited because with such a small screen it will be nearly impossible to view the stock ticker. 
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