14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like At&t and MobiTV Inc. are working together in order to bring the U-vers IPTV service to mobile phones.
MobiTv execs have confirmed the company's involvement with U-verse, while Paul Scanlan, the company's CEO and a founder of MobiTV said that the company will contribute its own licensed video content from the U-verse package.
MobiTV and At&t have been testing the technology and discussing a potential deal although they haven’t signed an official contract so far. "We haven�t announced any plans, and we continue to test IP-enabled applications in our labs," an AT&T spokesman says. "We've said often that one of the benefits of IP as a platform is that you can bridge content to the three screens, and we are looking for ways to do that."
By 'three screens' At&t means reaching TVs, PCs and mobile devices with their U-verse IPTV service. Since MobiTV is already a partner of At&t and Cingular that is not wholly owned by At&t, a further collaboration between the two companies in order to provide U-verse for mobile users isn't that surprising.
A while ago, At&t announced that MobiTV would power its new broadband video service, At&t Broadband TV, a service that now features 25 channels of news, sports and entertainment content.
More details are bound to be revealed soon, like which users the U-verse service will be offered to, for how much and when. While Verizon and Sprint are committed to MediaFLO and T-Mobile is still in doubt, testing several technologies, it is now time for Cingular's intentions of offering mobile TV to become clearer.