TV on the go

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: than 99 paisa a minute tariff for a voice call. In December 2006, it premiered world’s first mobile movie ‘Ctrl+Alt+Del,’ on Reliance Mobile World. The 25-minute film featuring Rahul Bose was specially produced for the mobile platform by Phonethics Mobile Media.

The current rollout by Idea Cellular for mobile TV is offered as a basic streaming service with a bouquet of 20 channels at Rs 150 a month. “Once the rollout and off-take reaches mass adoption, that is over 50% of the operator telecom base, we may expect a rise in the arpu. We expect it will overtake mobile music sales about 3-4 years post deployment. We expect mobile TV service would be in the range of Rs 150-200 per month for a bouquet of channels,” says an Idea spokesperson.

“Pricing models will be a combination of monthly subscriptions and payment for individual programmes but for continuous streaming TV, it’s up to the mobile operators to decide how to price it. Most are going for the model that’s been very successful in traditional pay TV—a wide variety of channels offered for a relatively affordable monthly price,” says Romal Shetty, executive director and head of telecom practice, KPMG.

Some operators are also experimenting with daily pricing, to encourage sampling and to get people familiar with the idea. Handset providers are spending a lot of time, money and resources to ensure that dealers are educated with respect to the usability of high-end applications and services. “Samsung and Nokia are going to work together to achieve interoperability amongst their DVB-H devices and the open standards-based Nokia network services system,” says Shetty.

“We are ready to launch mobile TV handsets in India once the market matures and 3G policies are in place. Initially, metros and urban towns will be the target cities for mobile TV which can slowly filter out to other semi-urban towns,” says Asim Warsi, general manager, marketing, Samsung.