Qualcomm has spent 8.3 million pounds ($16.2 million) buying 40 MHz of L-band spectrum in the U.K., which the company could use for its MediaFLO mobile television or other two-way wireless data services. However, the wireless chipmaker’s overseas shopping spree might end at the borders of continental Europe.

That’s because the EU is encouraging its member countries to adopt the DVB-H standard. Lucky for Qualcomm, those cheeky Brits decided to keep the auction open to a variety of mobile standards. That gives Qualcomm a chance to keep selling pricey intellectual property licenses for its proprietary MediaFLO technology. With all the vendors choosing the open LTE standard, it has to find some way to goose those royalties.

AT&T, after months of waiting, is finally launching its MediaFLO mobile broadcast television service. The Vu service, which is based on Qualcomm’s MediaFLO technology, will roll out May 4th in 58 cities across the country. Much like Verizon’s V-Cast service, which is based on the same technology, AT&T’s service will require new handsets capable of receiving the broadcast signals. AT&T will launch with two.

The need for additional hardware — and the additional fees, which range from $13 to $25 per month — may be what’s keeping MediaFLO down in the U.S. While neither Qualcomm nor Verizon break out numbers for the service, data from firms such as M:Metrics and Qualcomm’s financials indicate that the adoption rate so far is slow.

According to M:Metrics, 0.9 percent of the population watched broadcast services (which include MobiTV, GoTV and MediaFLO) in February, up from 0.6 percent in the same month a year earlier. Qualcomm has spent more than $800 million building out a network of towers to broadcast mobile TV on a former UHF channel. It won out over the DVB-H standard in the U.S., which has become the preferred mobile TV standard in Europe.

The European decision certainly wasn’t good news for Qualcomm, but the company is continuing to invest in MediaFLO. During the 700 MHz auction, Qualcomm spent $558 million buying spectrum in the E Block that can be used for delivering broadcast television — essentially doubling the spectrum it has available for TV. Qualcomm can use that to expand geographically, as well as to offer more channels should the service take off. And if it doesn’t, Qualcomm is apparently considering delivering more than broadcast television — perhaps creating a broadcast version of a portal for mobile devices.

AT&T reported solid earnings this morning, with income of $3.5 billion on sales of $30.7 billion for the first quarter. Like last quarter, wireless revenue drove growth, but U-Verse data looked pretty good too. As Om wrote yesterday, AT&T affirmed that it’s on track to add 1 million U-Verse subscribers by the end of 2008. At the end of March AT&T counted 379,000 subscribers for the IPTV service with 148,000 net adds in the quarter. Maybe when AT&T files its 10-Q we can see what the U-Verse churn looks like.

The folks behind the web show “Big Shot Live” have hit upon a formula that’s bringing them huge traffic. In fact, it’s worked so well that they’re now planning to spin off “Big Shot Live” as a separate company — and raise some $5 million to $10 million for it. NewTeeVee has the full story.

Comcast said today it plans to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” in cooperation with P2P companies and other ISPs. The bill is supposed to be a catalog of best-practice recommendations for P2P companies and ISPs alike, but the announcement was more than vague about what those recommendations might look like. NewTeeVee has the full story.

This winter holiday season, visitors to Best Buy will be able to purchase televisions and DVD players with the ability to transmit wireless video in high definition. But before getting too excited about dumping your cords, you should know that there are currently four different ways one can watch wireless HD, and it’s unlikely all of them will be built into consumer devices.

That’s right, the variety of wireless HD technologies are sowing the seeds of a new standards war. And standards wars stink. Whether between Blu-Ray and HD DVD or the varying shades of Ultra-Wideband technologies, when the fight centers on technologies, consumers lose. This year, SiBeam, a company participating in the WirelessHD standard operating in the 60 GHz band, plans to have products on shelves, as does a UWB vendor. Products based on the third standard, known as WHDI, are expected to be on shelves this winter as well.

Device makers have yet to choose a standard, so it’s hard to say which technologies — and related startups — will win out. It’s theoretically possible that multiple technologies could win, but in the cutthroat world of consumer electronics, spending an extra $20 to $50 for a second or third chipset in every video creation and playback device is hard to justify.

So which standard will prevail? Tandhoni Rao, founder and VP of strategy at Radiospire, a startup using the spectrum allotted for Ultra-Wideband to deliver wireless HD without compression, says that when it comes to conflicting standards, his company is thinking ahead. It’s working with UWB spectrum because it’s a known quantity, and because it was easier to develop chipsets that work in the spectrum between 3.1 GHz and 10.6 GHz for UWB rather than at the 60 GHz range. However, he says the AirHook standard proposed by Radiospire for HD video delivered over UWB would mesh well with 60GHz.

In areas outside of the U.S., the UWB spectrum isn’t always available, making Radiospire’s solution less ideal for a global market. The WirelessHD standard for 60 GHz is available in most countries for delivering HD video without compression, giving that technology an edge. However, WirelessHD at 60 GHz competes against Wi-Fi, which is one of the most ubiquitous standards out there. With Wi-Fi, the biggest challenge will be figuring out a way to deliver HD video without compression.

The outlier will be the WHDI standard offered by Amimon. It uses unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band to deliver uncompressed HD video over a WiFi-like signal around the home, and should have a product out through Belkin in September.

So before you give the gift of a wireless HD-enabled product, remember all the battles that have yet to be won.

We taped the 35th episode of The GigaOM Show this past week. I interviewed Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems where we discussed different topics including the importance of fundamental research, how Sun is changing and why he bought MySQL.

With this episode, we are going on a brief hiatus. While The GigaOM team - Liz, Katie & Chris - along with Joyce Kim had been doing a great job in keeping the show going, [thanks guys] to ask them to continue was above and beyond their call of duty. Being the show host, I felt I needed to return to the show to keep its fidelity but even taping a single episode proved to be quite taxing.

My doctors have urged me to now not to pursue activities that can raise stress and my blood pressure, and taping a show every week falls in that category. So for now we are taking a little break and will return sometime later this summer with a new look, once the doctors give me the thumbs up. Meanwhile, enjoy the episode and check out archives of the previous episodes.

Wow. Host Joyce Kim takes off for one week and things go crazy on this week’s episode of The GigaOM Show. We step into the world of Second Life with founder and CEO Philip Rosedale, who gets a virtual grilling from Wagner James Au (author of the new book The Making of Second Life). Rosedale gives us “The State of the Second Life” union address, talks hype cycles, and explains why the tech sector should still care about his company. Also on the show, we talk a little Hulu, and if Mary Tyler Moore is watching, I’m sorry for butchering your theme song (the producer made me do it).

UPDATE: Well this puts a different spin on this week’s episode: Philip Rosedale stepped down as CEO today. The company is searching for a replacement with more management experience.

You can also download the show for QuickTime, Windows Media, or Xvid.

NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes catches up with BitTorrent CEO Doug Walker and talks about the company, Comcast, traffic shaping and other sundry topics. Enjoy the video, and read Liz’s post over on NewTeeVee.

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire joined me (subbing for Om) and co-host Joyce Kim on the GigaOM Show this week. Hear him talk about Brightcove’s traffic spikes from TMZ, politics, and National Geographic; Yahoo’s Maven Networks acquisition; his company’s decision to drop its own ad sales team; and learning from experience to grow through partners. Download a high-quality version here.

Twenty years ago this month, the HP Deskjet launched, signaling the demise of the dot matrix printer (and its noise). Kids these days just don’t know how easy that have it. The first Deskjet cost $995, weighed 14 pounds and could only pump out two pages per minute. How did we ever make it through?

Well, people like Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP at HP’s imaging and printing division, certainly had a hand in it. Joshi stopped by The GigaOM Show to talk about HP’s Print 2.0 initiative, the company’s role in environmental issues, and the versatile abilities of inkjet technology (3D printing, anyone?). You’ve never seen anyone get so excited about printers before, though I’m still skeptical of Joshi’s claim that pictures printed with an inkjet printer are archival-quality.

You can download the episode in QuickTime, Windows Media, and Xvid.

Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and cleantech VC firm Khosla Ventures, is on a mission to foster clean energy technologies. He’s always fun to talk to, but in this week’s episode he gave Joyce and I the inside track on green transportation, biofuels, hybrids and getting the U.S. off its oil addiction. Download the episode here.

Get to know the new CEO of Mozilla, John Lilly, on this week’s GigaOM Show, where I subbed in for Om again. Joyce Kim and I had a nice chat with Lilly — he shares details on the recent executive changeover, the impending release of Firefox 3 (which Lilly claims never crashes on his machine), the formation of a new Mozilla subsidiary for email products, Mozilla’s desire to refrain from going public, and the effect of the potential Microsoft purchase of Yahoo on Firefox. Watch the embed above, or download a high-definition QuickTime version here.

Want to know how online games are going to make money in the post-World of Warcraft era? The GigaOM Show recently sat down with Joshua Hong, co-founder and CEO of K2 Network, the company behind Gamersfirst, a free-to-play game network that boasts some 4 million monthly active users. Om’s smart and gracious co-host, Joyce Kim, invited me on to chat with Hong, who was advocating the free model long before Electronic Arts got into the act.

(”For a high-quality version, go here. )

Heather Harde, CEO of TechCrunch, stopped by the “The GigaOM Show” this week to chat with co-host Joyce Kim and myself about The Crunchies, working for a blog, and her thoughts on the mergers and acquisitions market.

You can download the episode in Quicktime, Windows Media and Xvid formats.

Want tips on how to move to the Valley, take funding, and flip your startup for $75 million in under two years? Watch this week’s episode of “The GigaOM Show” with StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp. With a little prodding from startup lawyer and co-host Joyce Kim, Camp gets down to the nitty-gritty of stock options and the merits of angel funding. And GigaOM Managing Editor Carolyn Pritchard will be pleased to note that Camp is a fellow Canadian. Happy Boxing Day in advance!