14 DAY TRIAL // Verizon has already committed to Qualcomm's MediaFLO planning a commercial launch for the first quarter of 2007. Other mobile carriers like Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile have also run trials with the service.
Qualcomm seems to be ready to launch the Mobile TV service and is expected to announce its first content deals with TV broadcasters during the following weeks. While Modeo has pushed back the release date of its mobile TV service, MediaFlo's launch is highly anticipated.
"The growing demand for wireless multimedia services spans the entire wireless industry and MediaFLO provides the most advanced and cost-effective mobile TV solution for companies around the world," said Rob Chandhok, vice president of engineering and international market development for QUALCOMM MediaFLO Technologies. "Our work with leading handset manufacturers, such as Samsung, paves the way for UMTS operators around the globe to closely examine how a FLO-based service offering can take its mobile multimedia offerings to the next level."
Although a recent trial with News Corp's U.K. satellite broadcaster BskyB, in which MediaFLO performed 20% better than Qualcomm has set for the technology, revealed the fact that MediaFLO USA would be capable of supporting 24 simultaneous video channels over its 6 MHz spectrum, the service will, at first, focus on a smaller number of channels, including sports, news and children's channels.
"Qualcomm has made a number of claims about the technical capabilities of MediaFLO," Omar Javaid, vice president of business development for Qualcomm MediaFLO tehnologies said. "This not only affirms those claims, but it shows were even doing slightly better than them."