Virgin Mobile to trial TV to mobile phone service

 

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By Steve Malone

Posted on 6 Jun 2005 at 11:12

Mobile telco Virgin Mobile is the latest company to announce that it is to pilot a mobile phone TV service. The company has partnered with BT Livetime to develop the service that is being piloted to around 1,000 Virgin Mobile customers within the M25.

The trial is to take place over a four-month period and will be broadcast over the DAB digital radio network. The advantage of using the DAB digital radio network is that it is tried and trusted and, unlike the NTL solution, it doesn't require new transmitters or occupy existing 3G spectrum with programming.

The announcement of the pilot scheme follows similar trials by NTL and O2 and Orange and 3 all of whom are racing to bring the TV-to-mobile services to a wider audience, hopefully in time for Christmas. All the telcos agree that TV to mobile, especially for high profile live sports events, could be a lucrative way of getting more revenue from their customers.

The experimental TV service will provide Virgin Mobile's customers access to live digital TV 24-hours a day. For those who don't carry a copy of the Radio Times around with them, the service will also supply a mobile Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), so that customers can check the programme listings and set an alert to remind them when a programme is about to start, up to a week ahead. Virgin Mobile says that the TV service will eventually be extended to allow customers to record their favourite programmes to play back later on their mobile.

The first batch of stations broadcasting over the service are Sky Sports News, Sky News and Blaze, a new music channel designed specifically for mobile television, and more than 50 digital radio channels. Virgin says that after the pilot it foresees 'significant channel expansion' taking place for the commercial rollout.