Winter Olympics on mobile phones — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Mobilcast, NBC, Sonera} Winter Olympics on mobile phones

10 Feb 2006 at 22:56 GMT Timo Poropudas

Mobile phones owners can follow winter Olympic Games from Torino in many parts of the world.

In US and Canada Mobilcast is creating podcasts of regular updates about the winter Olympics.

“Using Mobilcast, Olympic fans in the U.S. and Canada can follow the progress of the games when they want, on the one device they carry all the time,” Stan Sorensen, Melodeo’s senior director of product marketing, said in a press release. Major TV-networks do not pay much attention to winter games.

To get Olympic updates, Mobilcast customers simply launch Mobilcast on their mobile phones and go to the Olympic Update channel. There they will find a selection of podcasts.

Mobilcast is available at www.mobilcast.com in the United States and in Canada through Rogers Wireless at www.rogers.com/podcasts.

MobiTV and NBC Olympics are offering daily highlights of the XX Olympic Winter Games through Feb. 26. The highlights will be available through a dedicated channel on the MobiTV service called “NBC Mobile: NBC Olympics.”

In Finland mobile operator Sonera will broadcast a live TV feed from the Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy, to its mobile phone customers. The broadcasts will be available on most Sonera GPRS, EDGE or 3G service phones for €1 a week during the Games.

Sonera will carry all of Finnish broadcasters YLE’s live broadcasts of the games. Sonera has the exclusive mobile rights to the Olympic Winter Games coverage from the YLE TV1, YLE TV2 and YLE24 channels. These channels are expected to broadcast approximately 330 hours of Games coverage.

In addition to the live broadcasts, Sonera will also deliver several hundred video collages of YLE’s broadcasts. These highlight clips will focus on the Finnish national team, particularly those events at which the team excels, such as ice hockey and ski events.