Qualcomm announced that Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has recognized MediaFLO(TM) technology as one of two official technologies for nationwide mobile multimedia broadcasting services in Japan. This milestone signifies that MediaFLO-enabled mobile TV services may be deployed in Japan once spectrum is made available in 2011. The only other mobile broadcast technology recognized by the MIC for this purpose is ISDB-Tmm, an evolution of Japan's digital TV (DTV) standard, ISDB-T.
"Working closely with local companies, we have taken a significant step toward expanding the diversity of broadcast-quality mobile content and value-added mobile services available to Japanese consumers," said Neville Meijers, senior vice president and general manager, FLO International. "The MediaFLO platform offers a rich user experience, high channel capacity and an open services layer to support a wide range of mobile broadcast services, making it an ideal platform to complement 3G services and the country's ISDB-T standard for free mobile TV programming."