As a tower operator, Crown Castle International Inc. is venturing into a less familiar environment as an enabler of what may grow into a major application in the wireless industry: mobile television.
By a stroke of good fortune, the company acquired a spectrum license in 2003, which makes it the only tower company with authority over the 1670 to 1675 MHz spectrum bands. Crown Castle owns more than 10,000 towers and holds nationwide spectrum that is unencumbered.
“It was an opportunistic purchase at an attractive price,” remarked Jay Brown, spokesman for the tower operator. But the company does not view mobile TV as a great driver of its revenue, even though major operators, device makers, content providers and equipment vendors are angling for a piece of the fledgling mobile TV business. “It is not going to be large enough to be a significant,” piece of the tower company’s business, he said.
Indeed, the company said it plans to bring in strategic partners and already counts a few: Nokia Corp. and Samsung Electronics. Nokia will provide the GSM phones while Samsung will provide CDMA phones. In the chip area, CCI is working with Texas Instruments Inc. CCI and Nokia are already trialing the technology in Pittsburgh, and they expect to begin deployments of the service in select major U.S. markets during 2005. Tests are also under way in New York.
“We don’t want to compete with our customers,” said Brown.
CCI “will not end up being an operator,” agreed Michael Thelander of Signals Research, adding that “somebody else is going to come in, an operator or somebody new.” He added: “It comes down to better utilization.”
CCI’s plans build on its digital expertise-including its audio broadcast for BBC in London and Freeview offering for video and audio, all of which are for fixed-line users-for the TV service, said Brown. CCI plans to use Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld technology to deploy wireless TV. Carriers in Europe also have embraced that technology. Both the DVB organization and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute have adopted DVB-H technology.
“These valuable assets, combined with our proven expertise in digital broadcasting in the U.K., provide a unique opportunity to take a leading position in the emerging mobile television market,” said John P. Kelly, CCI president and chief executive officer.
CCI plans to partner heavily with content providers, carriers, handset makers and chip makers. One of the companies that will work with CCI is Allen & Company, which has acquired a minority interest in the tower operator. The New York-based investment company said it will play an advisory role.
“Combined with the largest tower footprint in major markets in the country and the selection of an accepted global technology standard, we believe that over the next few years Crown Castle Mobile Media could effectively reach most of the major U.S. markets before any other new entrant is able to clear meaningful spectrum for such a dedicated service,” said Richard Fields, managing director of Allen & Company.
The wireless TV service is expected to compete with offerings from Qualcomm Inc., Verizon Wireless and MobiTV, which all either are already offering or planning to offer wireless TV to cellular users.
