[3GScottishUser]

The uptake of mobile TV services in Western Europe and the United States is "pathetic" according to Iain Gillot, analyst, IGR. Writing in a column published in http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070312/FREE/70308009/1017/FREE he cites research that shows that take-up is as low as 1 per cent in the United States and 3 per cent over here. In percentage terms it even declined in the US last year.

He says the failure is in the business model in that current payment systems are a concern for subscribers fearful that they will rack up costs too easily. Longer term he is hopeful that advertising can be used to provide free services due to the fact that the viewing demographic can be measured far more accurately than is currnently possible for mainstream television.

http://chiswickken.typepad.com/ringtone/2007/03/mobile_tv_uptak.html

[bsrjl1]

Shouldn't this be titled "Mobile TV: pathetic"? ;-)

[Hands0n]

The business model is entirely wrong, and based on the usual PTT-mentality greed of the mobile network operators to stew the Customers for even more cash!

I have sampled mobile TV from the likes of 3 and Orange's MobiTV, which utterly sucked. It was plainly awful.

I also tried Vodafone's 3G TV offering and it was very good indeed, but not sufficient to warrant me paying them the £5 a month to occasionally view.

And that's the rub, mobile TV is [in my opinion] only likely to draw occasional use and for that it is shockingly overpriced. 3% of the UK mobile users capable of using the technology obviously don't think so, but that is probably a representative demographic of the number of people who could afford the time to gawp at mobile TV for a worthwhile period of time in their week! For most of us, the prospect of watching mobile TV routinely during the day is unthinkable without swelling the UK unemployed statistic.

Even with "free" services with or without advertising I'd warrant that most of us (the other 97%) would still not have sufficient time to routinely use the services.

Another matter to consider is that of capacity - should there ever be another 9/11(US) or 21/7(UK) type inccident the non-broadcast networks would [predicatbly] go into their usual meltdown. Look what happened with the mobile network during our 21/7! If you'd even tried to view the events on mobile TV you'd have been met with a blank screen - all the while the broadcast TV was blasting images into every TV set in the land.

Mobile TV will be practically useless at such times unless, and until, the mobile networks build out sufficient capacity, and the UK Government "agencies" leave the networks alone during times of strife and stress.

No, mobile TV is not that elusive 3G killer application, and I think the buying public realise that clearly.

[Ben]

Scheduling, session timeouts and handset battery life are all major issues. I was trying to watch Six Feet Under on Vodafone, but with little to no schedule information, disconnects roughly every 30 minutes and abysmal battery life I only made it a few episodes in :( I was enjoying it, too, as the quality was largely good. Coverage is an issue, though, with this sort of interruption-sensitive service.

[Hands0n]

Well, yes. Those are the 2007 practicalities of the technology as implemented right now. It has got to get better, a lot better, before there will be any kind of moderate acceptance by the consumer. We are all very used to high-quality uninterrupted viewing. This "signal from the moon" stuff jars the senses!