It was the Peer Awards night, so we started the event with a five-minute sales pitch from all three contestants. The audience listened with interest… prepared to cast their votes.

Next we played a short video from Nokia – the 4th Screen [Ed: or if you like Tomi's term: the 7th Mass Media]. Basically mobile is the 4th screen that we watch in our lives, but the most pervasive and personal.

Pak Richard Kartawijaya followed up with an explanation of market progress and Mobile TV deployment around the globe. Japan and Korea definitely are the worldwide leader in  Mobile TV. Some of the key factors driving the deployment are availability of frequency, terminal readiness, cultural factors and content availability. Content is always a challenge, availability of mobile-tailored video/movies/episodes are crucial [Ed: I can't help thinking about the recently advertised 24 Mobisodes and LipstikTV - one of our Peer Awards nominee]. And another good news is CPE has been improving in battery life, usability and processing power [Ed: I'm thinking of the yummy Nokia N96], although still quite some distance to go.

And then Iman Hirawadi from Alcatel Lucent discussed the various technology options for delivering Mobile Broadcast: employing mobile unicast/multicast technology which leverages existing data connection, building overlay network such as DVB-H, MediaFlo, T-DMB, and using hybrid terrestrial/satellite broadcast (Korean S-DMB, Hybrind DVB-SH).

Each technology has their own merits and limitations in terms of contents, spectrum availability, impact to voice/data capacity, and scalability.

Indonesia?

Both speakers probed the possibility of doing Mobile TV in Indonesia. From the technical point of view, national standards and frequency allocation needs to be finalized [Ed: digital TV is planned in 2015, so some free spectrum coming...]. Next, operators and early adopters, both consumer and business users, need to find what are the values of  Mobile TV. Entertainment and lifestyle? News and information? Tele education? Collaboration? Personal Productivity? New marketing channels? The opportunity is wide open.

Final words: it’s just the beginning of the Mobile Broadcasting era…. watch this space. Keep innovating. Open your eyes wide! We also plan to get another session on Mobile TV later this year, looking from the other angle – broadcaster, media, users, and telco.

Bonus links:

• Jan Chipchase on Mobile TV research he did sometime ago in Korea: link
• Tanguy de Lestre on Mobile TV in Europe from Mobile Monday Summit 2008: link