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Re: UK Mobile Networks Try A New TV Standard To Cope With Data Demand | paidContent:UK

kumaramitabh — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:10:14 -0000

There is a window of opportunity for Terrestrial Mobile TV such as DVB-H to take off. Once 4G ( LTE) comes in, the networks would be able to deliver such services with ease. The broadcast services have a handicap- they need a tuner, which is not the case for 3G devices. As newer and newer devices get released ( iPhone 4), the brodcast services recede farther and farther in shadows.
Unfortunately, the broadcasters need to seek help of mobile operators if they have to succeed and it is not easy to come by.

Re: @ D8: Qualcomm’s Jacobs Not Happy With MediaFlo—But Not Winding It Down | paidContent

kumaramitabh — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:14:10 -0000

The problem is that the Phones are validated and released by the Carriers ( AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others) and they would like these devices to use video from 3G. Promoting any phones which enable off the net video ( e.g. via broadcast) conflicts with their core business. It is admitted that AT&T and Verizon are themselves providers of FLO TV which runs on the Qualcomm network,but the incremental revenues for them from this business are limited.
The problems will be more when ATSC based mobile DTV starts to grow by end of 2010.

Re: Qualcomm Admits Mobile TV Service Flo Needs More Distribution Channels | mocoNews

kumaramitabh — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:12:47 -0000

Re: Harvard students get lessons on Dharavi - Home - livemint.com

kumaramitabh — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:04:38 -0000

There can be no percievable policy on Mobile TV if spectrum is not allocated to terrestrial transmission. It is true that 3G operators will in fact roll out streaming mobile TV based on 3G, but they do not require a seperate license to do this. It is not clear what would be achieved unless policy measures are clear. the 25% for broadcasters does not help as most broadcasters need to simulcast to smaller screens. So if broadcasters and 3G telcos are out, for whom is the policy?

Re: Nokia extends presence in emerging markets

kumaramitabh — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:52:34 -0000

There is no doubt that Nokia has been a leader in the low cost phones so far. However this advantage is going away with the new Chinese phones with a variety of features.
So far as the Smartphone market is concerned, the Noikia phones have never left a stamp like the iPhone, Blackberry or even the Android phones ( e.g. HTC Touch). It is difficult to fathom a reason for such a performance.Nokia Smartphones such as N97 are overpriced.
It is time Nokia came up with a clear starategy for the Asian markets.

Re: QUALCOMM adds air interface, FLO-enabled PCTV apps

kumaramitabh — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:15:00 -0000

It is noteworthy that FLO air specifications Rev A already provide a significant advantage in C/N over its competitor DVB-H owing to a superior error coding scheme and layered modulation. The layered modulation scheme provides an advantage of 4.3 dB in C/N as compared to non-layered technologies. This translates into a C/N advantage of 7-9 dB for FLO-EV over competing technologies. The FLO air interface which is "streams based" is also more efficient in allocation of resources to mobile TV channels and provide a very effective statistical multiplexing, again lacking in DVB-H, where special techniques are required to obtain the same result.
It is significant to note that the mediaFLO technology has also been approved for use in Japan earlier driven by only ISDB-T ( one seg broadcasting). Japan is the largest mobile TV market in the world with over 80 million ISDB enabled handsets shipped. Many countries in South America also follow the ISDB standard.
http://www.mobiletvhome.com

Re: LG readies ATSC mobile TV for prime time

kumaramitabh — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:35:47 -0000

The development of the LG DP570MH reciever is a great development as it will offer a reciever for mobile DTV independent of the mobile carrier. We also expect to see Sprint phones ( samsung Moment ) at the same time.
However the real potentiial lies in the low power and low footprint chipsets which LG has developed as these will eventually find their way in virtually every smartphone as free to air recievers.
http://tv2mtv.com

Re: Korean Mobile TV Market: Consumers Are Tuning in, But Where's the Money? - mediabistro.com: MobileContentToday

kumaramitabh — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:08:59 -0000

The key to success of mobile TV lies in adequate base of handsets and going free to air is the best way to get a customer base before embarking on pay mechanisms.
The article is factually correct on many counts, however it has largely ignored the developments in MediaFLO technology and ATSC mobile DTV. After the completion of the digital transition in June 2009, the FLO TV services have expanded to all markets in USA and are becoming available on standalone devices rather than mobile phones alone.
However more important is the case of ATSC mobile DTV which is now set to be available as a free to air mobile TV channel associated with local TV stations throughout USA. This is the same model as ISDB-T in Japan, for which more than 80 million mobile phones equipped with Tuners have been sold to date.

Re: Satellite key for mobile TV despite slow pace of market growth, said Satellite 2009 roundtable

kumaramitabh — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:03:56 -0000

The article is factually correct on many counts, however it has largely ignored the developments in MediaFLO technology and ATSC mobile DTV. After the completion of the digital transition in June 2009, the FLO TV services have expanded to all markets in USA and are becoming available on standalone devices rather than mobile phones alone.
However more important is the case of ATSC mobile DTV which is now set to be available as a free to air mobile TV channel associated with local TV stations throughout USA. This is the same model as ISDB-T in Japan, for which more than 80 million mobile phones equipped with Tuners have been sold to date.
Also, almost all the satellite systems till date have been beset with some problems- the European satellite( S-Band) payload has failed, the ICO system has filed for Chap 11 protection and MBCco operating the S-DMB satellite system is beset with low revenues.The Chinese satellite for STiMi is still to be launched,, while services expand terrestrially.

Re: FCC�s broadband coordinator warns of spectrum shortage

kumaramitabh — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:55:13 -0000

Is it the Spectrum or the Technology which is giving in? A Window for Eco-friendly Technologies?
It is interesting to read that we are facing a spectrum shortage and that one of the reasons for it is just the 8 million iPhones and some more smartphones in the market, which have started to soak up the bandwidth and the spectrum. This makes it simplistic to understand and it is easy to believe that we are running out of spectrum. That may be easy to believe, but unfortunately, complicated to understand that we may also be running out of innovative technologies which may do better with spectrum.
The battle cry of spectrum running out was raised in the 1990’s when the analog cellular systems running at 30 KHz each had soaked up all the spectrum with not only a million users. Once the GSM and CDMA technologies came in, nothing much was heard on spectrum till recently, when the data services, once so sought after by the carriers actually took hold. So are we once again at the footsteps of another technology to deliver us from the spectrum woes?
Yes, we are, and even though we may not be able to rot our brains enough to come up with what it is, it is not far. The real problem is that the large operators always grow organically and have the least inclination to delve into innovative technologies, and with the exponential growth that we have seen so far, the spectrum shortage is natural.
A similar situation was foreseen in the early days of internet when internet streaming was being done without the benefit of Content delivery Networks (or Content mirrors at network edge). It was sincerely believed that even a million users will lead to the collapse of the internet if they started streaming from the same source. Of course nothing of the sort happened as the CDN technologies came in naturally.
The P2P networks and technologies like Bit Torrent create similarly efficient network infrastructures, though it is another matter that we have yet not developed sufficient expertise to allow them to operate securely. But it is now known that content need not be carried around recklessly if an appropriate architecture for the same is available. This requires intelligent network infrastructures, beyond what we have today. But with largely monopolistic control of the markets, few are willing to gamble on such infrastructures.
Wi-Fi is another technology, which rose very quickly into prominence. This is an eco-friendly technology in the sense that the size of the Wi-Fi “spots” are relatively small and the same footprint of frequency of about 100 MHz is used across the nation. With a proper backhaul, such as with Fibres or with WiMAX, it is possible to enable data services on a much larger scale than is possible today. The FCC has been well aware of it and has in place a roaming arrangement for the wireless ISPs.
But the issue is that the mobile operators see the Wi-Fi networks as “external” and go to great lengths so that the customers continue to use the mobile networks for data. Even the UMA ( or generic network access) which allows interoperability between the Wi-Fi and the 3G networks routes the data through 3G switches. The 3G switches themselves remain with legacy circuit switched architectures, with embedded gateways and signalling converters. An IP core is the objective but is not here yet. The 3G provides for multicast structures i.e. MBMS where a number of video streams can be multicast to thousands of users instead of thousands of streams being sent out from massive servers, each using up spectral resource. But there are virtually no implementations of MBMS so far.
The next generation network (NGN) initiative of the ITU has is based on an IP core, but with the ITU parentage being of fixed line operators, it is still oriented towards these networks. There are few which have thought of the mobile wireless networks with an integrated IP core using IPv6 which can use the spectrum optimally with techniques such as Continuous packet Connectivity and P2P type of network architectures.
Today we are lacking on both the fronts: the radio networks themselves, which are relatively inefficient and the network architectures right up to application level which have outlived their lives.
We are not trying to say that “this is it” i.e. the mobile P2P is the answer or it is the femtocells which will enable extensive reuse. But we certainly have exhausted the technology which is driving the present networks. It is creating a Frankenstein’s Monster of the spectrum requirements and if the same technologies continue to be used, any amount of spectrum will bring up against a wall.
In fact, this state of affairs has arisen when the real use of video streaming is still very limited due to the restrictions placed by the carriers, and the use of data while roaming overseas or even within the country is miniscule. The primary reason for this is that we are just at the beginning of the uptrend of the use of video, gaming, navigation and multimedia services. The growth trend should take us on a growth profile of well over a hundred times of the media that we use today, if it is not restricted by inefficient architectures. To be fair new architectures have been proposed by the 3GPP in the form of LTE, with speeds of 100 Mbps. But perhaps speed is not all that will be required. The granularity of the data use will be of primary importance, where a device, wireless enabled, will perhaps send a few bytes a day without making a call or a connection. WiMAX architectures are good for low data granularity but we will need to see far these networks are able to go against a foreboding competitor.
There are numerous other examples of such technologies which took the capacities much beyond the projected growth within the same physical infrastructures such as the multimode optical fibers ( Transmission capacity is today never a limitation even on the heaviest routes). The spot beam Ka satellites is another example, but we will stop here as such examples are far too many. All that we can say is that new technology is the solution to the types of impasses which we now see in “spectrum shortage”.
While we cannot predict the technology, we can begin to predict the trends which will perhaps constitute the elements of a future wireless network which will deliver much more in the resources we have today. For example, such a network will need to extensively depend on broadcast based deliveries where large base of users can be served for common content instead of millions of individual data streams. These may be in the form of FLO, ATSC M/H, MBMS or other technologies. Which one exactly is not important, but the elements will lie in mobile broadcasting. Secondly it will need to be able to deal with data streams of different types more intelligently. For VoIP the data packets are small but the periodicity required is high and latency small. For dormant wireless devices ( such as washing machines) the latency is of no value but the granularity required may be just a byte. The new architectures will need to more intelligently manage content as content now forms the bulk of what is transmitted on the networks. It may not be precisely p2p but close. We will also need network architectures which enable wireless devices to talk peer-to –peer because the use of such frequencies is ecologically more efficient. They do not impact a whole building or a city.
The FCC will need to play a key role in such initiatives. The industry bodies such as CTIA are important but they represent the collective wishes of the larger players. It is the FCC, which mooted net neutrality, (which has not been to the liking of the established players, and yet to take off), but is the one which can give some innovative players to come up with something disruptive.
So are we going to see a Malthusian disaster of ever growing demand and exhausting supplies? In a holistic model yes. But the heydays of such models never come as history is witness.
http://wimax-home.com

Re: The walled garden lives on

kumaramitabh — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:42:48 -0000

Walls of Berlin do not Last!
Like your walled garden created by your carrier? Many do, as they feel that the carriers are becoming more and more liberal such as permitting VoIP and more. But the increasing use of devices such as Smartphones while travelling takes you to a new world of astonishing charges which no one seems to be able to do anything about, not even your carrier. It is a no-man’s land where the writ of the regulators cannot be seen beyond the high walls which are created.
An ordinary webpage has a size of 200 KB to 1.2 MB depending on how much text and pictures it carries. Most mobile browsers do not display images unless specifically requested, but even then a “normal webpage, not designed specifically for mobiles may have about 200 KB of data and involve 10-12 frames, many of which will be displayed on different screens breaking up a single webpage to 20 or more screens. On the other hand a mobile webpage is only 4kB or thereabouts of data.
While roaming such vast differences in webpage size can make all the difference. If while roaming, you need to search for some Hotel information, find its map or click through a few webpages to see its reviews, whether it has the facilities you need, and make reservations including payment, you might well use about 50 web pages before you are through. At 200 KB per page, this can mean 10MB of data. With an efficient browser which strictly avoids any popups or downloads any picture, the single use would have entailed the use of at least 5MB of data. Even after regional regulators such as the EU have sharply reduced the rates for data while roaming, the rates are prohibitively high. For example even within the EU the Orange and O2 charge £2.94 per MB, T-Mobile charges £1.50 per MB and Vodafone charges £5 for the first 15MB and £2 for every MB thereafter (prices based on a UK pay-monthly customer using data from France). If you are roaming between USA and EU, expect to pay no less than $3-4 per MB. This makes the simple transaction of a hotel booking using a conservative 5MB worth $50. The same transaction would cost only less than $5 if mobile enabled sites are used.
It is not that the carriers do not have data plans. With over 500 million smartphones in operation of all makes and types including Blackberry, iPhone,Nokia business phones and other devices, such a situation would have been unthinkable. However most data plans leave you with no less than $1 per MB. For example the AT&T offered data plans for travels to over 90 countries with rates as follows:
$24.99/month: 20 MB Data Global Add-On gives 20 MB of usage within over 90 countries
$59.99/month: 50 MB Data Global Add-On gives 50 MB of usage within over 90 countries
$119.99/month: 100 MB Data Global Add-On gives 100 MB of usage within over 90 countries
$199.99/month: 200 MB Data Global Add-On gives 200 MB of usage within over 90 countries
A similar situation prevailed for European carriers. The Vodafone World rates for roaming in USA, for example were £14.99($30) for 25 Mb of data( Plus charges for a message if sent via MMS).
Looks nice doesn’t it? 20 Mb is fine for applications using Blackberry mail?
However the main differences start to arise in other data intensive applications such as the YouTube, Google Video, watching Sports and Cartoons or looking at travel and weather channels. The mobile Video standards have been designed so that video (e.g. in 3GPP) can be streamed at as low data rates as 64 Kbps against a normal TV feed running at 1 Mbps. A mobile TV screen has only 80 K Pixels as against 300 K Pixels in a SDTV. With efficient coding protocols, the mobile TV runs at 1/20th data rates than what a streaming Standard definition TV takes. A 3 Minute Mobile Video at 64 Kbps is just 1MB. So for a user, even with mobile devices which have real or Windows media players, it makes a lot of sense to view video from mobile TV websites. Even so, such services can only be watched using only unlimited data plans which are hard to come by while roaming. This makes fallback to Wi-Fi a must and even here, mobile TV sites are a great help as full screen data rates cannot be sustained otherwise. There are horror stories of unsuspecting users ending up with $2000 bills just because they ventured out with their iPhones and used the device as they do at home without having subscribed to a data plan.
Within the US, FCC had already mandated roaming within the wireless ISP providers i.e.for services like Wi-Fi. It had also turned the heat on cellular wireless operators to mandate roaming agreements with smaller operators as just four operators i.e. AT&T, Sprint,T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless have 90% of subscribers on their networks. But the data roaming and the charges for it can make Shylock turn green with envy. Even as rates with the countries continue to fall, user continue to rise to 5 Billion and above and the use of smartphones and roaming is becoming commonplace the artificially high roaming data charges are creating a smaller world. In August 2009, the FCC voted in favour of an investigation on the state of affairs in the wireless phone market. However it would be wrong to think that the situation is any better in any other country. In India where the voice rates are 1 cent per minute within the country, these rise to $5 per minute while in the US( 500 times), even for in country calling. A global village? Hardly.
The problems are serious as everyone knows. But there is no global forum where such rates could be controlled so that the smartphones can remain smart even if you go out of the country. It hardly needs to be said that the use of search websites such as Google, Yahoo, MSN or BING; or the use of mail services such as Live, Gmail, yahoo Mail can be dispensed with just because you are travelling. Nor can most people give up social networking websites such as Facebook, Flickr!, Twitter or itsmy.com depending on the preference. Most people still like to watch stock updates, headline news or weather information and use internet radios or use navigation services. Despite the high roaming charges being under great pressure, these ordinary activities come within the realm of possibility with the use of websites designed specifically for mobiles like the Twitter, with message length limit of 140 characters.
Every major news, travel, mail or search website has its mobile version ( such as m.nbc.com) and it is just a matter of time before virtually every website gets web enabled. Mobile Video, both uploads and downloads will continue to rise as will streamed mobile TV from mobile specific websites such as MobiTV in the US. The roaming charges still remain a question mark. Perhaps the carriers which retain such charges are killing the golden goose as they underestimate the amount of traffic which can be built up if the roaming data charges come in the range of “matter of fact” usage. Else they might just lose all the traffic to Wi-Fi or similar technologies. The bell may be tolling for roaming data charges.
http://tv2mtv.com

Re: Cisco Acquires Starent for $2.9 Billion: Another Step Towards LTE

kumaramitabh — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:28:26 -0000

I think it is quite far fetched to read more than what Cisco does best- to supply IP and networking equipment. There is no way it could have stayed out of WiMAX as it does represent significant rollouts and coverage of over 100 million users worldwide.
Thisis hardly a time to back peddle when WiMAX rollouts have gathered strength.

Re: Qualcomm to sell FLO TV directly to consumers

kumaramitabh — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:36:48 -0000

The move of Qualcomm to breakaway from its partners Verizon and AT&T may prove counterproductive in many ways. The service has been built so far by these companies in all the markets where they could sell it.

Something quite to the contarary is happening in Korea where the T-DMB operators( such as KBS), which are similarly placed as Qualcomm, are now tying up with mobile companies ( SKT, LG Mobile)to make the services interactive. The new initiate dubbed as DMB 2.0 is targeted at making the mobile mobile TV more interactive as compared to a plain TV transmission service.

http://www.mobiletvhome.com

Re: Qualcomm to sell FLO TV directly to consumers

kumaramitabh — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:29:59 -0000

Breaking the association from AT&T and Verizon may prove very expansive for Qualcomm. It is true that terrezstrial broadcastrs an work independently in certain ways, but this is certainly not true for Mobile TV.

We are now seeing something to the contarary in case of T-DMB where the broadcasters such as KBS are signing up with mobile operators ( SK Telecom, LG mobile and others) to make the mobile TV more attractive under the DMB 2.0 initiative.

http://www.mobiletvhome.com