Bandwidth Variability, User Interface Problems May Limit Mobile TV

Although all the majors have launched mobile TV services in the form of mobisodes, sports replays, primetime highlights and more, the services have yet to go mainstream. Only about 1.6 million subscribers consumed mobile video content in 2006, whether streamed or downloaded.

By far the primary barrier to the wide-scale acceptance of mobile TV today is the quality of the experience. Inferior video quality and poor user interfaces have conspired to make the viewing experience a clunky one that doesn’t live up to the sleek commercials that hawk the service. Left unfixed, the projected market of 800 million subscribers who will have a phone and data plan enabling them to consume rich mobile content in 2007 may not come to fruition.

“People are not willing to watch episodes of ‘Lost’ for $15 per month on top of a data plan when they can get it for free at home and on their PC, particularly when the experience isn’t great,” says Nick Desai, chairman at Juice Wireless Inc. “This is the single biggest issue for operators and mobile TV.”

There are a number of variables that can impact mobile television quality, says Ian Blaine, CEO at digital video publishing company thePlatform. “The transport network, encoding, the content delivery network and the client that resides on the phone all contribute,” he explains. “But the main challenges have to do with the signal strength in the 3G network.” Mobile users don’t have a dedicated connection, meaning a 3G session may deliver 500kbps at one moment and 50kbps the next, depending on the number of users connecting to the base station and other variables. This lack of predictability can make for a widely disparate user experience from moment to moment and location to location.

Mobile Video Subscribers, Streaming and Broadcast Click to Enlarge

Device variability is yet another issue. “Given the proliferation of the devices, there’s a need to recognize the right format and bit rate to provide the optimal video experience,” says Blaine. “A phone optimized for 3G is different from what’s needed on an older phone for 2G. In an optimized scenario where it’s a good signal and an optimized phone, you can get good viewing experiences today. But it really depends on where you are.”

ABI Research senior analyst Ken Hyers says his recent conversations with major carriers confirmed that capacity is the main culprit in mobile TV quality issues. “The presence of as few as five users simultaneously receiving unicast content from a single cellular base station carrier band can seriously degrade data access for those subscribers,” he notes. “This is further confirmation that broadcast is the only way to get mass market uptake of these services. Already, the market is bearing out that broadcast is the essential method for offering these services.”

Today’s mobile TV offerings are being delivered on existing 3G networks, which entail a one-to-one stream of television video. By contrast, a true broadcast network can enable a one-to-many multicast architecture, which is more efficient and allows for a higher, constant bit rate for video — that eliminates the issues of congestion at the base station as well as variability in packet streams. Also, a standard “receiver” will take care of the difference between devices, although getting handsets with such receivers to market at decent price points may take a year or two.

There are a variety of options competing to be the basis for network overlay options (WiMAX, DVB-H, Hiwire, MediaFLO, Modeo), and ABI expects broadcast rapidly to become the model of choice for distribution of live television, perhaps with deployments beginning later this year. Carriers will, in theory, be able to recoup the cost of the network build or license through greater interest in mobile TV. The overlay services likely will debut at $10 per month from Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp., encouraging mid-level consumers to use them, says Alan Varghese, principal analyst for wireless semiconductor research at ABI, and advertising will serve to subsidize high-quality programming.

Added Insight

For a glossary of definitions of such terms as DVB-H, Hiwire, MediaFLO and more, visit our Added Insight section.

For a few solutions on boosting the network’s ability to handle video, go here.

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