Qualcomm Reveals Plans for Massive U.S. Mobile Video Network
Nov 2, 2004, 3:02 AM by (staff)
Qualcomm this week announced MediaFLO, a new subsidiary with a goal of delivering high-quality video and audio programming to mobile phones in the United States. MediaFLO will use dedicated national spectrum in the 700 MHz band. The spectrum was formerly UHF TV channel 55, which has been vacated by the move to digital television, and subsequently purchased by Qualcomm. The network will support up to 15 live streaming channels and well over 50 clip-cast video and audio channels. This content will be delivered at QVGA resolution video, at up to 30 frames per second with high-quality stereo audio. The service will use FLO technology, which is specifically designed for decoding and playback on mobile phones. The service will work with both CDMA EV-DO and WCDMA technology. Qualcomm expects to begin commercial operation of the new network in 2006.
Comments
Not So Sure About This
Who is going put entirely new chips in their phone? That adds cost and the volume potential seems limited in regards to driving cost down.
Why not integrate a digital radio or TV reciever into the phone as TI intends to do. Then you get free content and you can sell lots and lots of digital TV/cellular chip sets?
I just don't know about this. It might be that the operators realy want this and asked for it but i have doubts.
viper said:
Wait just a minute. Was 3G not supposed to do this for us. Why do we need another network?
Not exactly. 3G is great for video-on-demand, but not so much for live TV content.
We need new networks like th...
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Yes!!!
No really, it is, and especially cool since Sprint and Verizon will have first dibs on it - I mean, what carriers have any remotely known plans for a WCDMA network here in the USA? w00t!
And this actually doesn't have that much to do with WCDMA...
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