MobiTV, which provides a managed service for mobile television and radio on networks including Sprint and AT&T in the United States, has now passed the five million subscriber mark. The presidential election saw an increase in viewing. A million subscribers signed up in the last five months. MobiTV previously pulled out of Europe, but has plans to expand back into that market.
The MobiTV service is available for $9.95 a month, both under the MobiTV brand and as a white label service for other operators.
“With the addition of over a million new subscribers in less than five months, MobiTV is widening its lead in the mobile media delivery industry,” said Charlie Nooney, the chairman and chief executive of MobiTV. “We’ve seen our subscriber base accelerate rapidly by creating an exceptional experience for the consumer and continuing to develop innovative offerings.”
The presidential election provided an increase in interest in mobile viewing, up 370% on election day. Users were able to watch ABC News NOW, CNBC, CSPAN, FOX News and MSNBC broadcasts on MobiTV.
“We witnessed an extraordinary increase in the number of subscribers that tuned into the presidential debates and election day news,” said Paul Scanlan, president and co-founder of MobiTV, which was founded back in 1999 and launched the service in November 2003.
Sprint and MobiTV received an Emmy engineering award for mobile television back in 2005, claiming to be the first companies to put live mobile television in the hands of consumers.
MobiTV services are currently streamed over existing cellular networks. MobiTV says it is network agnostic, with support for unicast, multicast and broadcast delivery.
ATSC M/H
MobTV has long been a supporter of the ATSC M/H standard for mobile and handheld devices being advanced in the United States. This recently reached the level of a candidate standard. It is based on H.264 encoded media carried over internet protocols using the vestigial sideband modulation employed for terrestrial broadcasts in America.
“ATSC Mobile DTV will allow broadcasters to leverage the wireless and local nature of their DTV transmission” said ATSC president Mark Richer in a statement. “Broadcasters will be able to provide new compelling services to consumers utilizing a wide array of wireless receiving devices including mobile phones, small handheld TVs, laptop computers and in-vehicle entertainment systems. Many of these devices will utilize existing ubiquitous technologies to provide a return channel for true interactive applications.”
ATSC M/H is an alternative to the DVB-H and DVB-SH standards developed in Europe.