LTE / 5G Broadcast Evolution

It's been a while since I last wrote about eMBMS. A report by GSA last month identified:
- 41 operators known to have been investing in eMBMS
- 5 operators have now deployed eMBMS or launched some sort of commercial service using eMBMS
- GSA identified 69 chipsets supporting eMBMS, and at least 59 devices that support eMBMS

#eMBMS
- 41 operators known to have been investing in eMBMS
- 5 operators have now deployed eMBMS or launched some sort of commercial service using eMBMS
- GSA identified 69 chipsets supporting eMBMS, and at least 59 devices that support eMBMShttps://t.co/EjjOH1tQxy pic.twitter.com/Gcc35BFC8H

— GSA (@gsacom) August 6, 2019

BBC R&D are testing the use of 4G/5G broadcast technology to deliver live radio services to members of the public as part of 5G RuralFirst - one of 6 projects funded under the UK Government’s 5G Phase 1 testbeds and trials programme (link).

A press release by Samsung Electronics back in May announced that it has signed an expansion contract with KT Corporation (KT) to provide public safety (PS-LTE) network solutions based on 3GPP standard Release 13 for 10 major metropolitan regions in South Korea including Seoul by 2020. One of the features of PS-LTE that the PR listed was LTE Broadcast (eMBMS): A feature which allows real time feeds to hundreds of devices simultaneously. It enables thousands of devices to be connected at once to transfer video, images and voice simultaneously using multicast technology

Dr. Belkacem Mouhouche – Samsung Electronics Chief Standards Engineer  and Technical Manager of 5G projects: 5G-Xcast and 5G-Tours Presented an excellent overview on this topic at IEEE 5G Summit Istanbul, June 2019. His presentation is embedded below.

Recent advances in Broadcasting standards and research from 3G4G

5G-Xcast is a 5GPPP Phase II project focused on Broadcast and Multicast Communication Enablers For the Fifth Generation of Wireless Systems.

They have a YouTube channel here and this video below is an introduction to project and the problems it looks to address.




Further Reading:

• GSA Report: LTE Broadcast (eMBMS) Market Update – July 2019
• GSA Snapshot: LTE Broadcast – eMBMS – Snapshot July 2019

Related posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: Multicast Operation on Demand (MooD) and Service Continuity for eMBMS
• Operator Watch Blog: Telstra's LTE-B Push
• Operator Watch Blog: Reliance Jio getting ready for LTE-Broadcast (eMBMS) rollout
• The 3G4G Blog: Mission Critical Services update from 3GPP - June 2017

Multicast Operation on Demand (MooD) and Service Continuity for eMBMS

Many regular readers of this blog are aware that back in 2014 I wrote a post looking critically at LTE-Broadcast business case and suggested a few approaches to make it a success. Back in those days, 2014 was being billed as the year of LTE-Broadcast or eMBMS (see here and here for example). I was just cautioning people against jumping on the LTE-B bandwagon.

According to a recent GSA report 'LTE Broadcast (eMBMS) Market Update – March 2018':

• thirty-nine operators are known to have been investing in eMBMS demonstrations, trials, deployments or launches
• five operators have now deployed eMBMS or launched some sort of commercial service using eMBMS

Its good to see some operators now getting ready to deploy eMBMS for broadcast TV scenarios. eMBMS will also be used in Mission Critical Communications for the features described here.

In a recent news from the Australian operator Telstra:

Telstra is now streaming live sports content to a massive base of around 1.2 million devices each weekend and sports fans consume 37 million minutes of live content over our apps on any given weekend.

This increase brings new challenges to the way traffic on our mobile network is managed. Even though a large group of people might be streaming the same real-time content at the same time, we still need to ensure a high quality streaming experience for our customers.

This challenge makes our sporting apps a prime use case for LTE-Broadcast (LTE-B).

Earlier this year, we announced we would be turning on LTE-B functionality on the AFL Live Official app for Telstra customers with Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S9 devices. Following extensive testing, Telstra is the only operator in Australia – and one of the first in the world – to deploy LTE-B into its mobile network.

At a live demonstration in Sydney, over 100 Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S9 devices were on display showing simultaneous high definition content from the AFL Live Official app using LTE-B.

Its interesting to note here that the broadcast functionality (and probably intelligence) is built into the app.

According to another Telstra news item (emphasis mine):

The use of LTE-Broadcast technology changes the underlying efficiency of live video delivery as each cell can now support an unlimited number of users watching the same content with improved overall quality. To date though, LTE-B technology has required that a dedicated part of each cell’s capacity be set aside for broadcasting. This had made the LTE-B business case harder to prove in for lower streaming demand rates.

This has now changed as Telstra and our partners have enabled the world’s first implementation of the Multicast Operation on Demand (MooD) feature whereby cells in the network only need to configure for LTE-B when there are multiple users watching the same content.

This combined with the Service Continuity feature allows mobile users to move around the network seamlessly between cells configured for LTE-B and those which are not.

Earlier this year we announced our intention to enable LTE-Broadcast (LTE-B) across our entire mobile network in 2018. With MooD and service continuity we are one step closer to that goal as we head into another year of major growth in sporting content demand.

Supported by technology partners Ericsson and Qualcomm, Telstra has now delivered world first capability to ensure LTE-B can be delivered as efficiently as possible.

Service Continuity will allow devices to transition in and out of LTE-B coverage areas without interruption. For instance, you might be at a music festival streaming an event on your phone but need to leave the venue and make your way back home (where LTE-B is not in use). Service Continuity means you can continue to watch the stream and the transition will be seamless – even though you have the left the broadcast area.

Taking that a step further, MooD allows the network to determine how many LTE-B compatible devices in any given area are consuming the same content. MooD then intelligently activates or deactivates LTE-B, ensuring the mobile network is as efficient as possible in that location.

For example, if a die-hard football fan is streaming a match we will likely service that one user with unicast, as that is the most efficient way of delivering the content. However if more users in the same cell decide to watch the match, MooD makes the decision automatically as to whether it is more efficient to service those users by switching the stream to broadcasting instead of individual unicast streams.

Its good to see Ericsson & Qualcomm finally taking eMBMS to commercial deployment. Back in 2015, I added their videos from MWC that year. See post here.

I think the Telstra post already provides info on why MooD is needed but this picture from Qualcomm whitepaper above makes it much clearer. Back in 3G MBMS and early days or eMBMS, there used to be a feature called counting, MooD is effectively doing the same thing.

For Service Continuity, this paper 'Service Continuity for eMBMS in LTE/LTE-Advanced Network: Standard Analysis and Supplement' by Ngoc-Duy Nguyen and Christian Bonnet has interesting proposal on how it should be done. I cannot be sure if this is correct as per the latest specifications but its interesting to learn how this would be done when the user moves out of coverage area in Idle or connected mode.

Note that this Expway paper also refers to Service continuity as Session continuity.

Related posts:

• Telstra's LTE-B Push
• Reliance Jio getting ready for LTE-Broadcast (eMBMS) rollout

LTE-Broadcast making a push while Terrestrial broadcast still popular as ever

"TV isn't dying, it's having babies." This quote made my day. I have argued a few times in the past that terrestrial broadcasting will continue working and will be probably the most popular approach for a long time to come. The way things work with it may change. Multi-screen is one possible approach but you may have more interactions like 'red button functionality', etc.

Anyway, in Europe 800MHz spectrum has been cleared for use by Mobile Broadband technologies (LTE mainly). 700MHz is planned to be cleared as well by 2020, as per the suggestion in Lamy report. The other UHF band from 470MHz to 694MHz would be left as it is until 2030, with a review planned in 2025.

This has forced even big players like BBC to start looking at other mechanisms to deliver TV. While BBC3 was moved to online only, BBC is also exploring how to use LTE-Multicast to deliver content. It has been working to have its very popular iPlayer work with eMBMS.

Embedded below is a presentation from Cambridge Wireless CWTEC 2015 conference.

eMBMS is gaining popularity with its presence in lot more chipsets and even more trials. GSA report has shown that there are quite a few trials going on worldwide but the question remains about the business models. Most operators would not like to become content providers and compete with the incumbents in their markets. Having someone like BBC in the UK is helpful but not sure how many such options are available worldwide. Embedded below is the GSA presentation

GSA: LTE Broadcast (eMBMS) Update - March 2015 from Zahid Ghadialy

Great LTE Broadcast demo by @Ericsson using devices from Samsung & LG powered by Qualcomm. Consumers will love this. pic.twitter.com/1uroaV3mk9

— Ben Wood (@benwood) March 5, 2015

There were some nice pictures from MWC as can be seen above. Ericsson has a video as well (below) on how the app works.

M2M LTE Broadcast module fm D-Link / Verizon. Huge potential here for billboards, taxis or any screen U can think of! pic.twitter.com/WL2f5mZ5bB

— Ben Wood (@benwood) March 5, 2015

D-Link is also working on M2M modules that could be used in billboards to dynamically update the ads at very regular intervals. There is a video here that explains this further.

Finally here is a Video from Visteon/Verizon that explains how LTE-Multicast can be used to deliver software updates in the connected car:



Finally, here are couple of presentations that may interest you too:

• Delivery of Broadcast Content over LTE Networks
• Transitioning from Broadcast TV to Broadband TV

Case Study: LTE for real time news gathering by Sky News

Back in May, I had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Richard Pattison from Sky News where he talked about how they have managed to start replacing their Satellite trucks (which are extremely expensive to own and run) with the new solutions using LTE.

One of the advantage of LTE over 3G/HSPA+ is that the uplink is as good as the downlink which wasn't really the case in earlier generations. What this means is that you can use your phone to do a live video call and use that for broadcasting of real time information. The Sky News Tech team has some interesting tweets on this.

We're broadcasting live from a Bradford City supporters bus on the M1 using a smartphone. Here's my view. pic.twitter.com/i2MXtXNht8
— Nick Martin (@NickMartinSKY) February 24, 2013

An example of the video quality could be seen from this clip here:

The Dejero App is an interesting one that can allow bonding of Cellular + WiFi and provide a combined data rate.

I was having a discussion yesterday on Twitter because we term this bonded cellular and WiFi as 4.5G. There are many proprietary solutions available for using them together but the standardised one is coming in standards soon.

Sky news have managed to set up new standards by having 12 feeds simultaneously broadcasting  (all based on Iphones and Ipads) during the European elections.



All this has been possible due to an amazing 4G network by EE and being able to negotiate a 500GB (0.5TB) data package.

In case you've ever wondered, this is what 500GB of mobile data looks like... #EE #4GEE pic.twitter.com/7v27RncK
— Sky News Tech Team (@skynewstech) February 19, 2013

Anyway, you can read the complete paper below:

LTE-Broadcast: Reality check

When I wrote my blog post about why the 'Cellular Broadcast may fail again' for the Cisco SP Mobility blog, I did not realise that this would become so popular and there would be so many people writing to me to tell me why and how my assumptions are wrong and how they plan to succeed. I have not yet received a successful reasoning on why people disagree with my article and where I am wrong.

In the Video Over LTE Summit just concluded, I did not get a chance to see all the LTE-B presentations but the ones that I saw, were not convincing enough, except for one by Erol Hepsaydir, of '3' UK, that I explain in the end.

Here is my presentation from that event:

LTE-Broadcast: Reality Check from eXplanoTech

The conclusion is not self-explanatory so here it is in my own words.

I am not opposed to the operators trying LTE-B out. I wish more operators do try and hopefully we can have a model where the technology can succeed. When operators succeed in a new technology, it benefits the whole mobile ecosystem directly or indirectly. The operators have to be prepared that they may not see any return. This should not discourage them because the learnings from this may benefit in something else. The customer and their loyalty is more important. We should try and provide them with a value addition rather than think of this as a new source of revenue. People are not interested in watching the same stuff they watch on the terrestrial TV on their small devices; unique and maybe tailored content would help. Finally, don't make the billing model too complex so the users shy away from trying this new technology.

The final presentation of the event was delivered by Erol Hepsaydir of the UK operator '3'. He said that from their point of view, they are trying to have eMBMS to create additional capacity in the network. If they know that many people watch news on different apps and websites, they can offer this as a free service over broadcast. What this means is that they have gained customer loyalty and also free up the capacity for other users who are doing other data related activities. I think this is a very clever approach. He did mention though that they are only in the simulation stages and have not tried it out practically. 

Internet Trends 2014, by Mary Meeker

Its June, time for the Internet Trends update by Mary Meeker, KPCB. Last year's update has crossed 3 million views on Slideshare. So many interesting slides, difficult to pick up some of the best ones to add here. I have selected a few that I really liked. The first being the growth in Smartphones and Tablets, as compared to PC's and Television's.

The other very interesting point to highlight is that the number of SMS's are decreasing and the number of OTT messages are rising. Just two days back, BITKOM, Germany released the news that SMS's are declining drastically in Germany. OTT's are taking over, rightly so.

Finally, with people doing too much multi-tasking, the above slide highlights what people are doing while watching TV.

Here is the complete set of slides:

KPCB: Mary Meeker Internet Trends 2014 @ July 2014 from Brian Crotty

Related news on the web:

• Forbes: Are We In A Tech Bubble? Not Really, According To Mary Meeker's Latest Report
• Business Insider: Mary Meeker's Stunning 2014 Presentation On The State Of The Web
• Quartz: Mary Meeker’s 2014 internet trends report: all the slides plus highlights
• Forbes: Mary Meeker's Web Video Love Affair
• Guardian: Mary Meeker: 2015 will be about 'findable data' and mobile sensors
• Business Insider, Australia: In 3 Big Slides, Here's Why Mary Meeker Is Optimistic About The Future Of American Healthcare
• Tech2: What Mary Meeker’s 2014 trends report says about India’s Internet usage

LTE-Broadcast of the operator, by the operator, for the operator!

Heard an insightful talk from EE in the CW event this week. While I agree with the intentions and approaches, I still think there may be too many assumptions in the eMBMS business model. I have made my intentions known all but too well in my earlier blog post here.

Some of the insights that I have gained in the last couple of months with regards to the way operators are planning to use the LTE broadcast is through the OTT Apps. Take for instance an OTT application like iPlayer or Hulu and some popular program is about to be broadcast, that program can be sent using LTE-B. Now some people may watch on the time (linear) and some may watch at a later time (non-linear or time-shifted). The App can be intelligent enough to buffer the program so there is no delay required when the user wants to watch it. This can open all sorts of issues like the user may have watched one episode on his device while the current one is being watched on his digital television. While the program is being buffered the battery and memory of the device is being consumed. How long should a program be stored on the device. There can be many other open issues.

Another question I had was how would the users be billed for these things. Would it be free since the data was received over LTE-B. Matt Stagg from EE said that the users would be billed normally as if they received it in case of streaming. He was more pragmatic though. He clearly said that in the initial phase everything would have to be free. This will ensure that any technical issues are ironed out and at the same time the users become familiar with how all this works.

Finally a point worth remembering, users prefer watching videos on their tablets. Most tablets are WiFi only which means the LTE-Broadcast wont work on it.

The presentation is embedded as follows:

LTE as a TV and Video Distribution Network - EE from Zahid Ghadialy

LTE-Broadcast (eMBMS) may fail again

I recently wrote a blog post for the Cisco SP Mobility blog on why the Cellular Broadcast may fail again (complete article embedded below). My main point is that small screen devices are not really suitable for mobile TV kind of applications. The larger devices like tablets are but since they do not contain the (U)SIM card, its not possible for them to receive cellular broadcast signals.

Anyway, I came across this picture below from the recent Ericsson Mobility report:

This highlights my point that more people are now preferring to watch videos over the tablets as compared to the smaller smartphone screens. Even though the other diagrams in the article does show a significant amount of users using their smartphones for viewing movies and long clips, my belief is that this will reduce over the time as the tablet share increases

A recent Business Insider article says that "One In Every 5 People In The World Own A Smartphone, One In Every 17 Own A Tablet". Once the users move to using bigger screens, their preferences on how they watch videos will definitely change.

A real interesting chart would be to show users viewing habits based on the screen size. Phablets are generally classified as smartphones but can be substitutes for tablets in many scenarios. They could definitely help the Mobile TV viewing habits on the smartphones.

Anyway, here is the complete article:

NTT Docomo gives another shot to Mobile TV

Couple of news items from earlier this month from Japan about the nottv Mobile TV service. First was that it celebrated its 1st anniversary. The second is that it has racked up 700,000 subscribers; less than a million that it was expecting. I have posted in the past about attempts by various parties on Mobile TV that was unsuccessful. You can read more about that here and here.

One of the ways Mobile TV can provide additional value as compared to the normal TV is through audience participation. NOTTV is working to be able to provide this feature in future. Also it uses the ISDB-Tmm standard for broadcast. Hopefully in future when eMBMS is more popular, it may be used to transmit Mobile TV data as well. A picture showing the difference between the ISDB-T and ISDB-Tmm is shown below (from the presentation here)

A magazine article on NOTTV from the NTT Docomo magazine is embedded as follows:

Service Overview of NOTTV Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting for Smartphones from Zahid Ghadialy

3GPP – DVB Workshop for Next generation Mobile TV standards

TSG RAN and TSG CT hosted a joint workshop with DVB project on commonalities between DVB-NGH and eMBMS

The workshop was opened by the RAN Chairman Mr. Takehiro Nakamura on Wednesday 16th March 11:07. This is the joint session between TSG RAN, TSG CT and DVB project expert. TSG CT Chairman Mr. Hannu Hietalahti reminded that the workshop can't make any formal decisions that would be binding on either 3GPP side or DVB project side. Any agreement needs to be confirmed in DVB project and 3GPP separately. From 3GPP side this needs to be done by 3GPP TSG RAN and 3GPP TSG CT meetings during this week. The goal of the workshop is to find a common agreement how to proceed the future work on DVB-NGH and eMBMS convergence and decide the best way forward. The joint session is expected to make recommendations to TSG SA #51 based on the service requirements for DVB-NGH and the commonalities with eMBMS that can be identified. TSG SA #51 will decide the best way forward on 3GPP side.

The MBMS presentation was embedded in this post. The DVB presentation is embedded below:

Co-operation between 3GPP and the DVB Project

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

The minutes of the meeting are available here: http://3gpp.org/ftp/tsg_sa/TSG_SA/TSGS_51/Docs/SP-110185.zip

All the documents from this workshop are available here: http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/workshop/2011-03-16_RAN-CT-DVB/

It was agreed that for any 3GPP work the normal 3GPP working procedures should be used. The supporting 3GPP member companies were requested to initiate Study items in the appropriate 3GPP working groups with the aim of sending them for approval during the next Plenary cycle.

It was noted that 3GPP Rel-11 stage 1 is going to be frozen in September 2011. It was seen 3GPP DVB-NGH can be a part of Rel-11 if there are interest in 3GPP community. The interesting companies are expected to contribute according to 3GPP working procedures.

3GPP Official 'MBMS support in E-UTRAN' - Mar 2011

Last month I blogged about the MBMS feature in Rel-9. The 3GPP official presentation on MBMS is now available. Embedded below:

MBMS support in E-UTRAN - March 2011

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

Presentation can be downloaded from Slideshare.

This presentation was a part of Joint one hour session of 3GPP RAN and 3GPP CT on March 16th 2011, 11.00 am – 12.00 p.m. More on this coming soon.

IMB and TDtv (and DVB-H)

Its long time since I blogged about TDtv. Its been quite a while since I heard about TDtv. Apparently its been superseded by IMB, aka. Integrated Mobile Broadcast.

IMB is used to stream live video and store popular content on the device for later consumption. This results in a significant offloading of data intensive traffic from existing 3G unicast networks and an improved customer experience. The multimedia client features an intuitive electronic program guide, channel grid and embedded video player for live TV viewing and video recording. All IMB applications can be quickly and cost-effectively adapted to support all major mobile operating systems and different mobile device types, including smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

IMB was defined in the 3GPP release 8 standards, and was recently endorsed by the GSMA as their preferred method for the efficient delivery of broadcast services. In June 2010, O2, Orange and Vodafone – three of the five major UK mobile operators – announced that they have teamed up for a three-month trial that will explore IMB wireless technology within a tranche of 3G TDD spectrum.

This spectrum already forms part of the 3G licenses held by many European mobile operators, but has remained largely unused because of a lack of appropriate technology. Currently, 3G TDD spectrum is available to over 150 operators across 60 countries, covering more than half a billion subscribers. IMB enables spectrally efficient delivery of broadcast services in the TDD spectrum based on techniques that are aligned with existing FDD WCDMA standards. This enables a smooth handover between IMB and existing 3G networks.

Issues that previously limited uptake of IMB, or IPWireless' tdTV system, have now all been addressed. Namely, the standard now allows for smooth handover between IMB and unicast delivery; has the potential to be integrated onto a single W-CDMA chip rather than requiring a separate chip; and has resolved interference issues with FDD W-CDMA, at least for spectrum in the 1900MHz to 1910MHz range.

IP Wireless already had a trial at Orange and T-Mobile in the UK (which have just agreed to merge), but in that pilot each 5MHz segment only gave rise to 14 TV channels per operator. The new standard could support 40 separate TV channels if two operators shared their TDD spectrum.

The GSMA announced its support and is backed up with additional support from both IPWireless and Ericsson as well as operators Orange, Softbank and Telstra.

There have been recently quite a few bad news for DVB-H and on top of that IP Wireless has announced that Samsung is going to be releasing phones with IMB support so it may be that we will see IMB sometime next year.

The GSMA paper that details IMB service scenarios and System requirements is embedded below:

Integrated Mobile Broadcast (IMB) Service Scenarios and System Requirements

View more documents from Zahid Ghadialy.

Ericsson Presentation: Cognitive radio in Europe

Cognitive radio in Europe [John Holland]

View more presentations from Keith.

Qualcomm probably given up on Mobile TV idea

Bad news for Mobile TV proponents and supporters.

Qualcomm apparently is in talks to sell off its struggling MediaFLO digital mobile TV business, executives said in a conference call on Wednesday.

The announcement came during the conference call accompanying Qualcomm's third-quarter earnings. Qualcomm reported net income of $767 million, up 4 percent from a year ago, on revenue of $2.71 billion, which decreased 2 percent over the same period a year ago.

During the call, Qualcomm chief executive Paul Jacobs announced the new direction for its MediaFLO business, a subsidiary of Qualcomm. MediaFLO brands its digital mobile television service as FLO TV. Qualcomm had saddled the business with a three-year, nonrefundable prepaid service agreement, which apparently hasn't helped MediaFLO's prospects.

"With respect to our FLO TV business, we're engaged in discussions with a number of partners regarding the future direction of the business," Jacobs said, according to a transcript by Seeking Alpha. "We are considering a number of alternatives and we will update you as appropriate."

This news comes at a time when Mobile TV business as a whole is not doing very well. Couple of weeks back I blogged about Mobile TV in China which has not been as successful as initially thought.

Qualcomm was one of the early proponents on another technology called MBMS. Couple of years back they decided to back MediaFLO and not focus much on MBMS. They bought the 700MHz spectrum in the US and launched nationwide TV network. This is also used by other carriers to deliver broadcasts to their devices.

In fact just a few months back they were pushing their standalone FLO TV device. Anyway, it seems they have probably given up on Mobile TV idea like a lot of others who dont see much return for the investment in Mobile TV. The average person is happy and content just to be able to watch Youtube on their mobile.

The following is from Rethink Wireless:

One option might be to shutter MediaFLO itself and sell on the licenses and tower assets - 700MHz is seen as beachfront spectrum in the US, and both Verizon and AT&T will build their initial LTE networks there. Jacobs made clear, in an interview with GigaOM, that he would rather keep MediaFLO as a content system. He said: "We want to see FLO continue so it's not like we'd want to sell the spectrum, but there are certainly people who would buy it for the spectrum. The spectrum is extremely valuable."

Qualcomm always intended to sell MediaFLO eventually - its usual route when it invests in spectrum and builds networks. The same pattern will be seen in India, where it will work with local partners to create a TD-LTE system in the 2.3GHz spectrum it recently acquired and then will sell the business on once established. However, it would have hoped to make more return on its investment in FLO before exiting. "We put FLO TV operations into our strategic investments for financial reporting because we always intended to get out of the operator business. …. It's not operating the way we want it to - it's not necessarily our core business, so we're looking at our options," Jacobs said in the same interview.

Mobile TV in China not as successful as initially thought

A wise consultant once told me that when the analysts were asking people if they would be interested in Mobile TV, nearly everyone said yes. What they didnt ask is what those people understood by Mobile TV. From a lot of users perspective, Mobile TV meant Youtube which is not what mobile community understands it to be.

Not long back we talked about Mobile and IP TV becoming popular in China. According to recent news in InformationWeek, it falling much short of expectations:

Commercial development of China's mobile TV service is falling far short of expectations. Of the 1.5 million users of China multimedia mobile broadcasting (CMMB), less than 3% are actually paying for the service, creating something of an embarrassment for China Mobile, the main backer of the standard.
CMMB was developed by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) based on Satellite and Terrestrial Interactive Multiservice Infrastructure (STiMi) developed by TiMiTech, a company belonging to the Chinese Academy of Broadcasting Science. The standard was announced in October 2006 and is similar to Europe's Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) broadcasting standard. Since then CMMB has been rigorously promoted by China Mobile and is bundled with its 3G network.
Sources say that by the end of the second quarter, 2010 domestic sales of CMMB handsets were around 1.5 million, approximately 30% of total 3G mobile phone sales at China Mobile, and much lower than the 50% target set by the operators. The service has been operational for more than a year but formal fees have only recently been introduced, which range from $1 to $3 per month. The small take-up of the service since fees were introduced does not bode well for the future of mobile television in China.
China Mobile was hoping to attract more paying customers with its World Cup offering, but this may have been wishful thinking. Analysts believe that the company's broadcasting and mobile communications divisions are lacking in unified policy and have no clear development path.
With widespread proliferation of cheaper "shanzhai" -- or copycat -- handsets, it is difficult to reach all potential customers. The CMMB technology is expensive and can only be found in specific dedicated smartphones.

Furthermore, there are more attractive and diverse streaming packages available from third parties. A clear advantage needs to be provided in order to entice users to use CMMB. China Mobile insiders say that they need to be following the advertising model used by mobile broadcasters in other countries because people are unlikely to pay for content, especially if they can find that content for free from a regular TV or desktop computer.

MBMS, Digital TV and IP Triple Play in China

Apparently according to this report by Xuefei (Michael) Peng, MBMS is alive and kicking in China with around 200,000 users already. I cant find more info so if anybody who can fill more info is more than welcome.

The government of mainland China has formulated a general plan to launch triple-play services, integrating telecom networks, broadcast and TV networks, and Internet together.

From 2010 to 2012, China will focus on the trial integration of broadcast and TV services and telecom services (including Internet services), dealing with any related policies. From 2013 to 2015, based on the trial experience, China will promote the integration nationwide.

In the coming five years, various sectors will prepare in different ways to meet the goals stated in the general plan. Telecom operators such as China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom will invest more to promote IPTV services and accelerate FTTX deployment. Meanwhile, broadcast and TV operators will accelerate cable-TV network integration and interactive TV services development and will more actively develop value-added Internet services.

Broadcast and TV operators are currently strong in video content and wireless broadcast, while telecom operators own two-way fixed-line networks, mobile networks, and Internet services.

The differences between broadcast and TV operators across different regions and the uneven distribution of telecom fixed-line networks and mobile networks can offer cooperation opportunities.

Notably, almost all provinces of China already have launched IPTV services. The total number of IPTV service users in China has exceeded 5 million. However, problems with IPTV content must be solved, and the price for IPTV services also needs to be lowered to attract more users and compete with digital TV.

Meanwhile, the transformation of cable-TV networks from one way to two way has been sped up. Two-way cable-TV networks now cover over 24 million users. In the coming three years, broadcast and TV operators will invest over US$5 billion to continue to change 100 million one-way cable-TV links into two-way cable TV.

Eventually, through cable-TV networks, broadcast and TV operators hope to run Internet access services. This has been in trial use in some provinces. In order to run Internet access services, however, broadcast and TV operators need to rent bandwidth from telecom operators, greatly increasing the potential cost of service.

Another aspect of the triple play involves the conversion of mobile services to triple play. Mobile-phone TV is an emerging service in China. Up to now, mobile-phone TV services based on the China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB) standard have reached 1.5 million users. However, the current CMMB standard only supports one-way communication. So the users can only receive broadcast-TV programs via mobile.

On the other hand, mobile services based on the broadcast multicast Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) standard serve about 200,000 users. The growing 3G user base will convert to the MBMS standard. Additionally, the government policy will affect the mobile-phone TV market too. So it is not clear yet which mobile-phone TV standard will dominate the industry in the future.

Qualcomm's FLO on the go...

Qualcomm's FLO TV is a reality in the U. S. of A. This is the advert which was being shown in the Superbowl

Many popular channels like the CNN are available real time. The following is a review from CNET.

Not everyone is enthusiastic, which is understandable considering the high cost.

I remember reading a research couple of years back which said that users are willing to pay a maximum of £5 for any service like the Internet or Mobile TV over their phone. Personally I think that is right and maybe in the next few months we may see the subscription prices dropping.

I would be interested in hearing from people who have experienced the FLO service first hand.

BBC and Ubiquisys stream multiple videos over a femtocell at MWC 2010

Impressive. I suppose they are four simultaneous PS dedicated calls as all other approaches (Like Mobile TV Broadcast technology and MBMS) would not be applicable for Femtocells (atleast for now).

Mobile Digital TV in US coming soooon (Q1 2010)

In 2007, transmission of full-motion digital television signals to mobile and handheld devices was proven technically feasible. Leaders of the broadcasting industry came together to make mobile digital television a reality; they formed the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) to accelerate the development and rollout of mobile DTV products and services, maximizing the full potential of the digital television spectrum.

Today the OMVC truly represents the industry, with members that own and operate more than 800 commercial and public television stations nationwide.

There was a lot of publicity of MDTV at the CES 2010 recently in Lag Vegas, USA. Here are few Youtube clips on MDTV.

There is also an interesting OMVC Mobile TV Use Cases document available here.

MBMS and AMR-WB

Nokia publicly underlined its commitment to broadcast-mobile-TV standard DVB-H with the recent unveiling of the mobile TV edition of the Nokia 5330 and its pretax, presubsidy price tag of €155 (US$230), after some in the industry had questioned its enthusiasm for launching new DVB-H devices. Nokia also quelled any suggestions that it might start supporting the MBMS standard with its future device launches.

The price is a massive drop from the €550 price tag carried by Nokia’s last fully DVB-H-compatible handset, the N96, which launched in 3Q08. So the official line from Nokia is this: “All is well on the good ship DVB-H.”

Read more here.

Meanwhile, In China, China Unicom has launched 3G telecom services in 268 cities across the country, said Li Gang, another deputy general manger for Unicom Group, noting that the WCDMA network supports a 14Mbps download data transmission speed and a 7.2Mbps upload data transmission speed.

Notably, the carrier has adopted the most advanced R6 technology in its core WCDMA network to smooth a WCDMA-to-EPS migration in the future, according to Mr. Zhang.

The China Unicom network is expected to support MBMS and HSPA+64QAM technology in the first phase of a further evolution, shore up a HSPA+MIMO technology in the Phase II evolution, and prompt a LTE technology in the Phase III evolution, said Mr. Zhang, adding that the network will present a 100Mbps download speed and a 50Mbps upload speed after the Phase III evolution.

Read more here.
Back in September, Orange Moldova announced the launch of the world's first mobile telephone service offering high-definition (HD) sound. The service will provide customers with a significantly improved quality of service when making calls. Unlike for other mobile technologies such as multimedia capabilities, this is the first time since the 1990s that mobile voice technologies have been subject to a significant evolution.

This is the second step in Orange’s HD voice strategy, following on from the launch of a high-definition voice service for VoIP calls in 2006. Over 500,000 Livephone devices have already been sold in France and the range will be extended to other Orange countries over the coming months.

The first mobile handset integrating high-definition voice capability that will be launched by Orange Moldova is the Nokia 6720c. This innovative handset integrates the new WB-AMR technology, which is widely expected within the industry to become a new standard for mobile voice communications.

Thanks to the Adaptive Multi Rate-WideBand (AMR-WB) codec, double the frequency spectrum will be given over to voice telephony over traditional voice calling. Orange boasts that the result is "near hi-fi quality" and "FM-radio quality", which seems an odd comparison.