Mobile TV: Capitalizing on Entertainment

Mobile is now a multi-purpose device which offers entertainment, business computing, and voice and data services on a single platform. Mobile TV is hailed as one of the most prominent entertainment services amongst the vast array of services. It is featured with an added benefit of social networking opportunities that can further drive usage. And it also woos operators because of its huge revenue potential.

For the success of mobile TV, operators should pay attention for optimizing the quality of experience and deliver services that meet or exceed customer expectations at an affordable price. Bandwidth constraints and compression quality have to be taken into account. Video and audio quality should be enhanced, time to access the main TV portal, screen resolutions, and channel tuning speed should be efficient despite the relatively low bit rates available to deliver mobile services. While determining the quality of experience, transport layer ought to be perfect because mobile networks are extremely sensitive to bandwidth variations. Due to this poor bit rate, regulation of encoded streams has an immediate effect on packet loss levels resulting in degradation of service. Video streaming needs to be non-disruptive, and it should not overlap on top of the video stream. Once these technicalities are taken care of, other things like influencing viewing behavior will fall in place.

Mobile TV assures return-on-investment provided the telecommunications ecosystem offers unique, exclusive and valuable content that is more appealing along with affordability. The most popular content on mobile TV service includes music videos, movie trailers, weather, sports action clips, comedy videos, cartoons, and amateur video shots.

Pricing Model

Most of the leading operators have launched mobile TV with different tariff models. MTNL has unveiled mobile TV service 'nexGTv' in partnership with DigiVive. It has looped in Apalya as well. NexGTv offers over 50 live channels—entertainment, reality, news, religious and regional channels. The services are priced at a monthly subscription of `99, weekly and per day is `35 and `8, respectively for all channels without any additional data charges. BSNL streams 50 channels. It charges `10 to watch a channel for a day and `30 for all channels. Non-premium and non-regional channels are aired at `99. Additional charges are exempted for data usage. Tata Indicom has kicked off the service with different data plans with 1MB, 2GB and 15 GB of data-1MB costs 50 paise, 2GB is `500 and 15GB is `1,500. It extends 63 channels for `75 monthly and data charges are additional. Tata DOCOMO's mobile TV comes with a price tag of `99 monthly for 100 channels.

Reliance Communications extends 60 channels and 50 video-on-demand channels. Subscribers can opt for any channels like news, sports, kids or a complete pack of 75 channels. The other attractive monthly charges start from `150 for 15 channels, and `250 for 75 channels without any additional charge on data downloads. For Airtel mobile TV, subscribers have to shell out `40 for 20 minutes of viewing per week. One channel can be watched for a week by paying `15 with a total of 30 minutes of viewing. One channel a day is charged at `10 for 20 minutes of watching. Vodafone's mobile TV service comes with 2 plans viz `150 and `7 for a month and a day, respectively. Idea Cellular's service is priced at `3 per minute without any restriction on channels and no additional data charges.

Hence all the operators are heading to capitalize on the potential. It is a win-win situation for operators, semi-conductor companies, network carriers, handset manufactures, and content providers. Mobile operators will not have to worry about its adoption because major chunk of consumers demand for more entertainment value from mobile phones. Besides, its flexibility and adaptability to social networking will drive global adoption and apparently deliver the added revenue that the operators anticipate. And several consumers are also comfortable to pay for mobile TV services with a simple pricing model based on usage.

Malini N
Malinin@cybermedia.co.in