The Telly-Phones

Australia’s incumbent telco Telstra will trial DVB-H mobile TV technology later this year, according to a story I wrote for the Icon section of the Sydney Morning Herald. “The trial will initially involve 15 channels beamed from Broadcast Australia’s Gore Hill transmission site in Sydney and is expected to grow to 30 channels by the end of the trial with much of the content provided by Telstra”. Telstra doesn’t actually produce content, but has a cable TV division that should come in handy. The service differs from that offered by rival Optus by having better quality and reduced capacity problems – Optus has been streaming a couple of public stations over 2.5G for a couple of years now, with pretty poor quality. “Telstra will be developing interactive applications such as eCommerce to go with the broadcast television, as well as tests for providing “on-demand” content.”

If you want a bit of background on the whole mobile TV bonanza, Digit has a good summary of what’s happening in the industry. The article covers the different standards for broadcasting TV and compares them to streaming video over 3G networks. The punchline? “If mobile TV becomes really popular, which is possible, then both the broadcast and video streaming channels will be necessary and can complement each other…Customers could use the broadcast service to watch a live sports game and the video streaming service to download a music clip or an entertainment program on demand.”

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