Mobile TV Action Hotting Up; A Lot Of JVs In The Works

Televisionpoint.com: An interesting story on mobile TV in India. It says a slew of joint ventures are being sewn up by players in this space.

The Cellular phone TV market is beginning to witness a slew of potential joint ventures between DTH platforms, cellular service providers and technology enablers. Interestingly, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal mentioned that there is nothing to stop telecom operators from broadcasting live over cellular phones.
The story quotes sources as saying, “Star TV is in the process of forming an alliance with NDF and Zee TV may form an alliance with a company called Conax. While Reliance Infocomm is set to form a tie-up with Dutch company Irdeto, Reliance Infocomm has even tested- technology from Qualcomm as well as Irdeto and they are happy with Irdeto’s DVBS-2 technology.”.

So is it difficult to start mobile TV service? Legally, no. “A telecom operator, who wishes to broadcast live over cellular phones, has to register as a cable TV or broadband operator. Telecom operators already supply broadband and cable TV connections. So legally, there is nothing to stop them from broad casting live television over cellular phones. In fact, anticipating precisely such a development, we made a unified license recommendation in January 2005, besides the study paper on new generation networks,” Baijal has said.
So what does it take to start a cellphone TV service right away? Industry sources say, “It would take about Rs 100 crore to start a preliminary service in Mumbai. This would include augmenting existing cellular TV infrastructure with broadcast video capabilities.”

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