BT, Virgin in pact to offer Europe first mobile TV service

BT, Virgin in pact to offer Europe first mobile TV service

	Published : Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:10 By : David Simms Print this Story

BARCELONA: BT Group Plc. said it has tied up with Virgin Mobile U.K. to launch mobile TV on cell phones. Virgin Mobile, Britain's fourth largest mobile operator, will use BT's Movio mobile TV product to offer up to five digital channels and 350 radio channels on mobile phones, the first in Europe to do so.

The agreement was announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications trade shows.

Joint trials by BT and Virgin in Britain have shown encouraging response from customers, who are prepared to pay additional price for TV and radio on their mobiles. The companies have found that two-thirds of 1,000 users would be prepared to pay up to 8 pounds a month.

Virgin Mobile, majority-owned by Richard Branson and in talks with cable company NTL for a possible acquisition, will be the sole user of the Movio service in Britain for a limited period. BT has confirmed it is talking to other operators too.

Emma Lloyd, BT Movio's chief executive, said the service would be launched this summer. Only the Triology handset made by Taiwanese firm HTC will be able to use the service initially. The device is based on internet protocol. The content is delivered over a broadcast network. It has a 2.2-inch screen and a range of other media driven features including removable storage and an integrated 1.3 mega pixel camera.

Some mobile operators like Hutchison Whampoa's 3, Orange and Vodafone Group already stream TV channels over their 3G networks, though this is not an ideal service for the mass market because of bandwidth constraints. BT's technology envisages broadcast of the signals to be picked up by a microchip in the phone. Movio works on the digital audio broadcast platform, which does not have spectrum restrictions. It also uses the digital video broadcast-handheld, or DVB-H standard, which allows higher number of channels.

Describing the service, Graeme Hutchinson, sales and marketing director of Virgin Mobile said, "It's not downloaded, it's not looped. It's real TV just like you get at home."