While mobile TV services in the country have been largely restricted to non-live TV offerings by telecom service providers on their 2.5G networks, the launch of 3G networks is expected to give a huge fillip to this service.
Industry analysts are of the view that mobile TV will be the third fastest growing mobile application after mobile music and application downloads, with about half a billion people regularly watching TV on their phones by 2011, thereby contributing significantly to operator revenues. According to Frost & Sullivan estimates, about 11 per cent of the operators’ data revenues will come from mobile TV by 2012. Currently, voice accounts for approximately 90 per cent of most operators’ revenues.
There are two main ways of delivering television content to mobile devices ?? through mobile telecommunications networks on 3G technologies or by using broadcasting platforms such as Qualcomm’s MediaFlo and Nokia’s digital video broadcast transmission to handheld (DVB-H) technologies.
With the government recently raising the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in mobile TV to 74 per cent, this niche segment is expected to grow. In January 2010, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) sent its recommendations on mobile TV to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, most of which have been accepted in principle.Apart from agreeing to 74 per cent FDI in mobile TV services, the ministry has also accepted TRAI’s recommendation that service providers be allowed to select the technology for this service. The regulator’s recommendation to hold a bidding process for issuing licences for offering mobile TV services has also been accepted. Licences will be given on a state-wise basis and each player will get 8 MHz of spectrum in the 585 MHz and 806 MHz frequency bands. TRAI has also suggested that the number of licences held by a single entity for offering these services should be limited in order to prevent monopolisation. Doordarshan, the only broadcaster to start mobile TV services on the DVBH platform, has also been permitted to share infrastructure with private broadcasters on a mutual-agreement basis. In addition to the entry fee, operators will have to pay 4 per cent of their annual revenues as licence fee to the government. While the existing telecom operators with unified access licences will not have to bid for a mobile TV licence, they will be required to pay all the levies.
However, the regulator has so far failed to address the biggest issue ?? providing a level playing field between the broadcaster and the mobile service provider, which has been a bone of contention between the two parties for some time now. Other areas that need attention are content generation by broadcasters and content aggregators to attract the mobile industry’s large customer base, and spectrum availability.
With the ongoing 3G auction, India is expected to emerge as a major mobile TV market. Currently, all operators are offering mobile TV services, with Vodafone Essar being the first to launch mobile video streaming services in the country in December 2006.
With industry experts predicting the Indian mobile TV market to reach a viewership of half a billion by 2011, technology enablers such as Qualcomm and Apalya Technologies are betting big on the segment. Incumbents Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, which were allocated the scarce 3G spectrum over a year ago, rolled out 3G mobile TV services in the country last year in collaboration with Apalya Technologies. While the operators have been able to stream at a maximum of 32 kbps for optimal viewing according to the available bandwidth on a 2G network, on a 3G network, they have streamed 100 kbps. Other leading operators including Idea Cellular, Vodafone Essar, Tata Indicom and Bharti Airtel have also been using Apalya’s MimobiTV application.
Tata Teleservices forayed into the mobile video-related value-added services segment in 2009 and initiated video streaming, video downloads and other offerings for its customers. Taking mobile TV to the next level, the operator has recently launched Photon TV, an application that allows Tata Photon+ subscribers to watch live television on their laptops while on the move.
The latest to join the fray is Sistema Shyam TeleServices Limited, which has launched its CDMA-based services under the MTS brand. The operator is now in the process of launching its 3G technology-based mobile TV services in the country and is in talks with leading handset vendors to provide the service. The company, which wants to migrate to long term evolution in the future, intends to aggressively focus on data services besides voice telephony to drive its revenues in the highly competitive market scenario.
With a mobile-using population of over 563.73 million and counting, and operators pulling out all the stops to generate revenues from mobile TV, the Indian market clearly represents a huge growth potential for this technology. However, the real challenge is to make it ubiquitous and cost effective, for which the right policy framework and spectrum allocation are the need of the hour.
