mobTV Happens in Vegas
Here’s an interesting tidbit from behind the Wall Street Journal’s subscription wall. MobTV is getting another foothold stateside.
Satellite operator SES Global S.A., seeking to find a place in the burgeoning wireless-entertainment arena, today is expected to announce it is joining with a start-up company that controls a big swath of mobile broadcast spectrum across the U.S.
The anticipated technical and marketing alliance between SES Americom, the U.S. unit of Luxembourg’s SES Global, and closely held Aloha Partners LP of Providence, R.I., is intended to demonstrate the business case and consumer appeal of beaming digital music and high-resolution video to cellphones and other consumer hand-held devices. But the initiative also illustrates broader efforts by satellite-services companies to participate in the fast-changing media landscape, particularly at the convergence of television and
… A yearlong test is planned to begin this fall in Las Vegas, though negotiations with programmers and leading cellular providers still have to be worked out.
The plan is the most ambitious yet to test such a system using fewer transmitters, or towers, to simultaneously distribute as many as 40 higher-resolution video channels directly to handsets. Implementing the concept would end up costing a small fraction of the estimated billions of dollars necessary to build out rival networks relying on less-powerful broadcast signals and thus requiring towers spaced closer together.
Multichannel News has a bit more, no subscription required.
It’s encouraging news, after my previous post on mobTV spreading in Korea, across Europe, and into Canada and North America. It’s also encouraging that, after re-reading my post on how mobTV works, I think I get how the Las Vegas project is gonna work out. I’m guessing the involvement of a satellite company means using a satellite signal to cut down on spectrum issues like the ones covered in my previous post.
So, this sounds like a wish fulfilled. I just hope that the tag line from those edgy and ubiquitous Las Vegas tourism commercials doesn’t hold true for this latest stateside foray into mobTV.
