Mobile phones with TV receivers being tested

Licence competition to commence in autumn

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The world's first commercial testing of mobile phone TVs started on Tuesday in the Helsinki area.
      The purpose of the test is to find out how interested the Elisa and TeliaSonera operators' 500 test clients of various ages would be in watching TV programmes on their mobile handsets.
     
The test users were given - until midsummer - the new Nokia 7710 media phones with an accessory device attached to the back cover to enable television viewing.
      The smart phones can be used to watch programmes from the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), the Finnish commercial TV station MTV3, the Finnish Channel 4 (Nelonen), plus various international themed TV channels.
      The test run of the mobile TV is being promoted by Digita, Elisa, MTV3, Nelonen, Nokia, TeliaSonera Finland, and YLE.
     
"Technically it is already easy to view up to fifty TV channels on a mobile handset. In a couple of years a TV on a mobile phone will be as common as text messaging", estimates Nokia director Anssi Vanjoki.
      While watching TV programmes, the smart phone can be used to contact the Internet to dig out background information on the programmes, or perhaps sports results. The use of various supplementary services interests the testers as much as where and when the test-subjects view TV on their handsets.
      During the trial, for a basic monthly fee of EUR 5.00 the testees can view all the principal Finnish channels, and for a couple of extra euros more channels will be made available.
      "The idea is to find out what the clients are willing to pay for", Sonera development manager Pekka Pasari notes.
     
The current testing is a follow-up to an undertaking from last autumn where the mobile TV's technical specifications were scrutinised. According to preliminary findings, people use mobile TV to watch sports in particular.
      Handset TVs were used in cars, public transportation, cafés, and meetings.
     
Commercial utilisation of the mobile TV will not start in Finland before next year at the very earliest.
      In the first place, a transmission network for mobile TVs will have to be constructed. Mobile handsets cannot be used to view normal digital TV transmissions.
      The Ministry of Transport and Communications will decide in the autumn who gets the licence to establish a mobile TV network. The current pilot network operates only inside Helsinki's Inner Ring Road (Kehä I), which limits the test-subjects to people living in Helsinki and parts of Espoo.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nokia to bring digital television to mobile phones by 2006 (3.11.2004)

Links:
  Nokia

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