Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Watching TV On Your Cellphone? It's Coming To UK

Qualcomm said Tuesday that it will team with U.K. digital television operator British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) to trial mobile television technology in the U.K.

The trials of the company's MediaFLO technology will begin this summer, Qualcomm said in a statement. It will test transmitting about 30 BSkyB channels over a cellular network to mobile phones at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels at a rate of as much as 25 frames per second, according to the company. Streaming audio will also be part of the trials.

Qualcomm has been pushing its MediaFLO technology as a way for cellular operators to increase revenues and for television programmers to extend their reach to new customers. However, other standards such as DVB-H are vying for attention among both programmers and cellular operators.

While Qualcomm has signed an agreement to test the technology with Korean cellular operator KDDI, this is the first trail to be conducted in Europe.

"As one of Europe's largest, most successful and best-known multichannel television platform operators, BSkyB is the ideal company to team up with Qualcomm on our first MediaFLO trial in Europe," Peggy Johnson, the company's president of Internet Service and MediaFLO Technologies, said in a statement.

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