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Wireless users racing to dial up mobile TV
Sprint, others broadcast shows on cell phones

By Jefferson Graham
Gannett News Service

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051004/NEWS03/510040317/1004/news03

LOS ANGELES - Brainstorming about how to take their company to the next level back in 2003, three guys in Berkeley, Calif., came up with a crazy notion that a cell phone was powerful enough to display television images.

On little 1- and 2-inch screens. And that people would pay to watch it.

Potential partners laughed at first. But in November 2003, Sprint became the first wireless carrier to offer Paul Scanlan, Phillip Alvelda and Jeff Annison's MobiTV to consumers. This September, Sprint and MobiTV received a special Emmy award for their efforts. The service, now also offered by Sprint and Cingular, has attracted 500,000 subscribers.

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"I would never bet against the American love affair with television," said Scanlan, MobiTV's chief operating officer. "It spans all ages and all demographics. The logical next step is to be able to watch TV anywhere."

Competition, too

In a wireless world of nearly 200 million cell phone subscribers, half a million customers is a drop in the bucket. But it is about on par with the total audience for some cable networks. For instance, The Discovery Channel, which is carried on MobiTV, averages 445,000 daily viewers on TV sets.

MobiTV has "built a consumer experience that people understand and accept, which is a rarity in technology," said Mark Donovan, an analyst at research firm M:Metrics. "Now their challenge is to grow and keep competitors at bay."

As entertainment and cell phones converge, companies of all sizes are scrambling to compete. Startups such as GoTV, PacketVideo and SmartVideo are, like MobiTV, bringing video content to phones. San Diego-based Qualcomm, which makes chips for phones, is testing a system to transmit TV signals from broadcast towers directly to handsets.

MobiTV recently announced that it plans to expand beyond TV with MobiRadio - 50 satellite music channels - as a separate subscription.

Millions of users likely

Music has exploded into the world of portable devices, but radio on cell phones is currently very limited.

"People want their local traffic and local radio. This is the first step. We'll get there," said Alvelda, MobiTV's chief executive officer.

British research firm Informa Telecoms and Media predicts that in five years, there will be more users of broadcast mobile TV worldwide - 124.8 million - than there are U.S. TV homes (110 million).

"Our goal is to bring ABC to them anytime, anywhere and on any device," said Bernard Gershon, senior vice president of ABC News' digital group.

ABC News Now is one of many channels included with MobiTV's service, which also includes MSNBC, ESPN and Fox Sports.

MobiTV (which is marketed to some Sprint subscribers as Sprint TV) differs from Verizon's vCast video-clip service in that it is real-time TV. The service works best with large-screen or color-multimedia phones that range from $100 to $400 from Sprint and Cingular.

Quality improving

Because wireless networks and handsets are constantly improving, the quality of the MobiTV image has grown from a glorified slide show to "a real video picture," said Brian Seth Hurst, a MobiTV user.

Boston Web designer Matthew Smith began subscribing to MobiTV a few weeks ago and has written enthusiastically about it on his blog. "I signed up for the 'wow' factor," he said. "I show it to my friends, and they're blown away. "

You won't find hits such as "Desperate Housewives" on MobiTV. Prime-time network programming has rights issues that have yet to be tackled, so news is the primary motivator for sign-ups.

'Easy to use'

Sprint took a chance on the young company because the MobiTV application "was easy to use, and the guys were, and continue to be, easy to work with," said Dale Knoop, general manager of Sprint's multimedia services division.

Cingular, which signed up a year after Sprint, likes MobiTV because "it changes people's expectations of what a phone can do," executive director Rob Hyatt said.

"We have a tremendous advantage," said co-founder Annison, MobiTV's vice president of engineering. "We have a head start and know how to efficiently run a global TV network. "