Qualcomm wants to be a one-stop-shop for mobile TV — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Industry group forms around FLO} Qualcomm wants to be a one-stop-shop for mobile TV

3 Sep 2005 at 06:54 GMT Timo Poropudas

Qualcomm has pulled together The FLO Forum, (Forward Link Only) which is pushing to standardize this Qualcomm’s technology for transmitting multimedia content to mobile devices.

Qualcomm is working on FLO with the aim of setting up a nationwide network in the U.S. that will offer video and audio content to mobile phone users.

The company’s MediaFLO USA Inc. subsidiary will aggregate content and deliver it over the network. The company has plans to have a U.S. mobile operator reselling the service commercially by October 2006. Analysts are doubtful about the time frame if not the whole technology.

A Qualcomm chipset for FLO client devices, called MBD1000, is expected to ship in sample quantities in the fourth quarter of this year.

Formed late July, the FLO Forum, which will include LG Electronics Inc., Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and other vendors, will work together to promote development of FLO products and services, Qualcomm says.

The Forum will be run as a non-profit industry association, based in Fremont, California. It will support the standardization of the technology, probably under regional bodies such as ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and TIA (the U.S.-based Telecommunications Industry Association).

Competing with DVB-H, DMB and MBMS

FLO is one of several technologies being developed for delivering multimedia content to a large number of mobile devices. Vendors and operators are looking at less bandwidth-hungry alternatives than unicasting, namely broadcasting, which sends one stream of data to all users, and multicasting, which can send one stream of data to a select group of users who sign up for it.

In addition to FLO, other technologies for solving this bandwidth problem include DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld), DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting) and MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services). ETSI has approved DVB-H as a standard and MBMS is part of the 3GPP (Third-generation Partnership Project) set of standards.

According to IDG News Service standards backing for DVB-H should draw a large number of equipment makers to the technology, analysts said, and cellular giant Nokia Corp. as well as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. already are working with it. In the U.S., Crown Castle International Corp., which owns a large number of cellular towers, has leased spectrum and is currently running a trial of a DVB-H service in Pittsburgh with Nokia.

Qualcomm holds patents that are used in the FLO technology. The company is more interested in providing services than in generating licensing revenue. MediaFLO USA will operate its network and wholesale its service only in the U.S., leaving other companies to build and run FLO networks elsewhere.

29 channels on TV channel 55

Within a single 6MHz U.S. TV channel, MediaFLO could deliver 20 real-time streaming video channels and 10 channels of stereo audio around the clock in addition to eight minutes per day of video clips. That mix could change, depending on demand. MediaFLO already has a nationwide coverage footprint, leasing spectrum on what has been used as TV channel 55.

Getting MediaFLO will be easy for service providers, according to Qualcomm: All they will have to do is add MediaFLO capability to the specifications for the handsets they order and set up a contract with MediaFLO to deliver content to their subscribers, Qualcomm says.