The domestic broadcast mobile TV space has gone from three potential providers to one in less than three months.
AT&T Mobility’s announcement last week to pay $2.5 billion in cash for Aloha Partners L.P.’s 700 MHz spectrum portfolio likely signaled an end for its HiWire L.L.C. subsidiary, which was using that spectrum to test mobile TV service in Las Vegas. Already this summer Crown Castle International Corp. sold the spectrum it once planned to use to offer live, broadcast TV services. Thus, MediaFLO USA Inc., which is the only provider of broadcast TV to paying customers, is the sole survivor in the fledgling space.
AT&T Mobility has been mum on its plans for the newly acquired spectrum. The carrier already has a deal with MediaFLO to use its networks to offer broadcast mobile TV to AT&T Mobility customers by the end of the year.
“AT&T’s acquisition of spectrum licenses from Aloha Partners has no effect on our relationship with AT&T. We are moving full steam ahead with AT&T to bring its mobile TV service to market,” Michael Boyd, VP of licensing and research at MediaFLO, said in an interview with RCR Wireless News. “We continue to work with AT&T for their MediaFLO launch and are moving ahead and focusing on our own business. We feel our milestones to date speak for themselves.”
Sizing up the space
Kanishka Agarwal, VP of mobile media at Telephia, said it’s too soon to guess who stands to gain from HiWire’s spectrum sale. Just because the ownership is on track to change hands doesn’t mean the new owner will mimic similar broadcast services, he said.
“First-mover advantage only gets you so far,” Agarwal said. “I think money draws people in. When you see a way to make money, there will be other people there.”
Agarwal said he always looks at the industry through the consumers’ lens, and because of that wants to see plenty of mobile TV competition in the broadcast and unicast space. “I do hope there will be multiple broadcast services,” he said.
“The good news for mobile is there’s a need for both,” Agarwal added. “There’s demand in both worlds and there’s equal demand so I wouldn’t definitely peg one as better than the other.”
Indeed, MobiTV Inc. and GoTV Networks Inc. both offer unicast TV services that are distributed over wireless carriers’ 3G networks. MobiTV surpassed 2 million customers earlier this year.
Cautiously optimistic
MediaFLO isn’t pouncing on the news as a godsend, but instead focusing on its own strategy and concerning itself with competitors in the unicast space that are already in the market.
“We know how long it took us to get here,” Boyd said.
“We want to open the door for as many consumers as possible to experience FLO TV, and we will look at opportunities that continue to lead this to happen. In our experience, consumers are interested in mobile TV and MediaFLO is providing a compelling solution for the marketplace,” he said. “From day one, MediaFLO USA has believed that FLO TV’s technology foundation has had a number of benefits and strengths over competing technologies. These strengths played a key role in enabling us to secure commercial agreements with Verizon Wireless and AT&T.”
HiWire’s future
HiWire President and COO Scott Wills consistently said the company would not build out a network without at least one major partner on board. Like Crown Castle’s Modeo service, HiWire reiterated that partnerships could come from outside the wireless space, but nothing ever materialized. Many questioned whether these companies could survive without a wireless carrier partner; indeed, neither of them did.
Aloha Partners is currently using the spectrum to trial its HiWire DVB-H network in Las Vegas with partner T-Mobile USA Inc. HiWire was the lone remaining DVB-H player in the U.S. market. Modeo also used the DVB-H standard for its trial.
Aloha will continue to oversee the Las Vegas trial through the end of the year, said Wills, though he declined to discuss specifics on the future of HiWire.
“We believe that the main issue to be addressed is still about the consumer appetite for mobile TV. If we can prove the dog will eat the dog food, we’ll show that there’s a market there.” Wills said following AT&T Mobility’s announcement. “We’re very enthusiastic about its potential.”
