Mobile TV: A good show

Despite regulatory hurdles and spectrum issues, the world of television or TV on mobiles is making a promising start in India with players like UTV and National Geographic channel joining the increasing number of players like Reliance Communications, MTNL and BSNL.

While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has approved the access of TV on mobiles, service providers still cannot stream live TV channels on to the handset due to spectrum allocation from the Ministry of Information and Broadcast. However, since the regulations do not allow a direct transmission of TV channels, service providers as well as content providers have started using a technology called Unicast which provides content to end-user on a one-on-one basis. One handset pulls content from a central repository and transmits it through a wireless network.

Public service broadcaster Doordarshan currently offers limited mobile TV services in Delhi. However, the market has seen increased activities from various stakeholders including technology providers, network equipment vendors and mobile service providers.

For instance, UTV New Media — the digital arm of UTV — recently announced the launch of a music video channel on Mobile TV. Branded as UTV@play, this will provide users an exclusive mobile channel where they can access videos and music with a click of a button. With a catalogue of 15,000-20,000 songs, UTV with this launch is expecting to garner at lest 10,000 subscribers in the very first year. T N Prabhu, CEO, UTV New Media feels there are users who are interested in such content. “We have seen that users from India stream video’s from International sites. We are sure there is enough users who are looking for such content on the mobile handsets,” said Prabhu. The National Geographic channel, too, has joined the fray by launching Nat Geo Mobile.

With over 300 million mobile phone users in India, and an addition of almost 10 million users every month, mobile TV does hold a promise. Springboard Research, in a recent report, estimates that mobile TV services market in India could reach $360 million (around Rs 1,780 crore). The report says that in the first year of operation, mobile TV could reach a penetration level of 5 to 6 per cent (of the total mobile subscriber base) in India. If taken at the current subscriber base of 375 million, this would mean that India will have over 20 million mobile TV subscribers within the first year of the launch of service.

Reliance Communication, through its R-world has been providing mobile TV for quite some time now. “While its difficult to quantify the number of users, Reliance has revenues in a few lakhs every month through its mobile TV offering. We are currently offering 11 news channel. A user can watch TV on the handset with a lag of a few minutes as they are not transmitted live,” said Krishna Durbha, Head Business and Marketing, VAS Reliance Communications. But he believes that there are still lot of barriers.

Shiva Bayypunedi, director and founder of Apalya Technologies, provides technology support for mobile TV for service providers like MTNL, BSNL, Spice, UTV among others feels that the Indian mobile TV market is still very nascent. “Other than the spectrum issues, constrain in handset, standardisation of technology platform are some of the barriers for the growth of this segment. Moreover, India is still predominantly a prepaid market. In such a scenario getting the volumes is difficult,” adds Bayypunedi.

A Springboard research indicates that 50 per cent of respondents (base of 1,215 users) said they would be very interested in mobile TV, while another 34 per cent said they would be fairly interested in it if it were available and affordable. Besides, a high percentage (86 per cent) of those surveyed said they would be either among the first to try or would definitely try a new service if somebody showed them how to use it.