Australian incumbent Telstra has launched BigPond TV — a mobile TV for its Next G 3G customers. If there’s one thing that can be said about this service, it’s that Telstra hasn’t pitched a tent in any of the camps that claim to know what viewers want from mobile TV…it’s pretty much covered everything.
Programming: The service will offer both on-demand and continuous broadcast content, and will include full length episodes of shows. The shows will be mostly archive, but there are some “catch up” TV efforts where Telstra will offer the new episode the day after it has aired in Australia (eg Damages). Overseas shows include big names such as South Park and the local line-up also has some big (locally) names, such as The Chaser’s War On Everything. The full-length episodes will be chaptered like a DVD, so users can jump to where they left off, as well as rewind and so on — the license is for a week. Telstra will also air some Aussie made-for-mobile shows, Girl Friday and Big 5. Finally, it’s also showing minisodes, a Sony effort that squeezes hit retro shows like Charlie’s Angels into just a few minutes, because that’s really all the entertaining parts. I’ve seen a minisode of BayWatch — furious action broken up by (to quote the voice over) “but first, the girls take another long shower in slow mo”.
Cost: “Under the pay-per-view pricing model, consumers will be expected to pay 50c for access to short clips for 24 hours. Full TV episodes will cost $4.95 per episode for 7 days…Consumers can also buy monthly subscription packages offering 25 clips or 55 clips priced at $9.95 and $19.95 respectively. Telstra has set its monthly TV subscription pricing at $9.95 per month for four episodes” reports Australian IT. BigPond’s group managing director Justin Milne also said that Telstra would consider a free version of the service if it got enough viewers to attract advertisers: “I think there’s a good argument that ad supported content on the internet and on mobiles is the general sort of direction that we’re heading in,” Mr Milne said.”
Issues: Milne told ZDNet AU that the crucial factor in determining the success of failure of mobile TV will be network speed. “While Telstra’s Next G network has an optimum speed of 7.2Mbps download, mobile phones currently available on the network can only provide speeds of half that. “In future, bandwidth will be like electricity — it’s just there whenever you want it. At the moment, it’s like water, where it’s ‘do I have enough to use, can I have a good shower?’,” he said.” The wheels are slowly grinding for a DVB-H network in Australia but the industry is still waiting on spectrum and regulations, and Telstra has downplayed its interest in a mobile broadcast TV service. Though when it does get going Telstra is likely to be involved somehow…
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