T-Mobile And Orange Announce Mobile TV Trial

Orange and T-Mobile UK intend to jointly pilot a new mobile TV and multimedia broadcast service in London that will see customers receive up to 24 high-resolution television channels along with 10 digital radio stations.

The pilot is scheduled for the second half of 2008 and will be targeted at people living or working in West London.

The trial will use TDtv technology, which was developed by US-based NextWave Wireless at its British unit in Chippenham, Wiltshire.

It is hoped that the technology will be able to provide a cheaper and higher quality mobile TV service than is currently available.

The channel lineup is expected to include many of the most popular broadcast and premium television channels in the UK.

Paul Jevons, product and innovation director at Orange, said: “The results from the technical trial of TDtv in Bristol last year were extremely encouraging, and this joint pilot of the service in London is an excellent opportunity for us to properly explore the great potential available to our customers from the technology.”

Emin Gurdenli, T-Mobile UK technical director, said: “Our involvement with this TDtv pilot is intended to raise awareness of the potential of broadcast mobile TV and help stimulate the development of an industry-wide ecosystem in which operators, handset manufacturers and content providers collaborate to realise a robust commercial proposition.

“TDtv uses part of the licensed 3G spectrum which is unused at the moment and is a technology that can scale to support high simultaneous usage levels without any degradation in quality.

“This solution would be ideal for broadcasting live, large sporting events such as the 2012 Olympic Games to high population densities.”

Orange: orange.co.uk T-Mobile: www.t-mobile.co.uk