Tuesday, 9 January 2007

Verizon Offers Live TV on Cell Phones

Verizon Wireless is planning to release a broadcast television service for mobile phones that can play live TV before March 2007. "In short, real TV programming that goes with you, without wires," said John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Verizon. The service is hailed as V CAST Mobile TV and will be available for a separate fee apart from the company's USD 15-a-month video and music service.

Theses days, mobile phones usually have short TV clips and such, but only few feature full length TV programs. Sprint, Cingular and Alltel have a TV service run by a company called MobiTV, which claims more than 1 million customers.

Verizon claims to be the first to provide channels of full-length programming for wireless phones over an independent network. The company claims that it will provide eight channels, that will include MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, NBC, CBS and Fox.

The mobile phones that will have the service include Samsung's SCH-u620 and the LG Electronics VX9400.

"There is a healthy amount of skepticism that people will pay for TV on their cell phone," said Maribel D. Lopez, vice president at tech advisory firm Forrester Research. "It is yet to be proven by anybody that consumers are willing to pay for TV again for the phone," she said.