Vodafone and Sky TV’s joint venture to launch a mobile TV service in the UK for 3G users has gone live.
The service, which will be available only to 3G subscribers in areas of 3G coverage is called Sky Mobile TV. Some channels will be broadcast “as live” and others will be dedicated “made for mobile” channels.
To sweeten the launch deal, Sky will be streaming live coverage off England’s cricket test series in Pakistan, and will make the entire package free of charge until January 2006. F
rom February customers will be charged £5 per month for each of the packs to which they subscribe. So far there are two packs, one for news, sport and factual programming and one for entertainment and music.
Discussion about mobile TV has centred around whether a streaming service using the mobile network or a broadcast services using integrated TV receivers attached to the phone will be more attractive to the user.
Certainly for many operators, the attraction of streaming TV over the network is highly attractive. Vodafone’s decision to tie the TV launch to 3G is also significant. Clearly the greater bandwidth available will increase the user experience, but also the service offers a distinctive differentiator for 3G users over the enhanced 2G data services. An added attraction is that all existing handsets can receive the service.
The issue for users will be whether they are prepared to accept access to live coverage of news or sport, or even packaged mobisodes, only when they are within 3G coverage.
Peter Mercier, spokesperson for MobiTV told Mobile Europe that the announcement was “further validation for the mobile television category”.
“Following MobiTV’s 21 successful launches worldwide, including the first two commercially available mobile television offerings in the UK with Orange and 3, MobiTV believes this growing momentum is generating strong demand from operators to deliver further mobile services of this nature,” he said.
Vodafone has launched mobile TV in six operating countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain), three associate networks (Belgium, France and Switzerland) and one partner network (Austria).
