Cellular – Page 68 – Digital-Lifestyles

Patrick Parodi, Mobile Entertainment Forum – The IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews

This is the seventh in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

We talked to Patrick Parodi, Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum about what the MEF has set out to achieve and the future rolls our mobile phones might take on.

Patrick has a dozen years of experience in designing, planning, and launching wireless network services in more 20 markets world wide. In addition to his current role at Packet Video Networks, he has worked for Diveo, Skytel, Teleworx and TVAnswer in various business development and marketing positions.

Some of our readers may not have encountered you, or the Mobile Entertainment Forum. Could you give us some background on the MEF and your involvement?

The Mobile Entertainment Forum is a global trade association representing all participants in the mobile entertainment value chain.

It started out 4 years ago with a few technology providers for mobile games and messaging coming together, along with Booz Allen Hamilton, to consider the cross industry issues facing mobile entertainment. I’ve personally been involved with the Forum for 2 years, first as Board MemberVice Chair and recently as its Chairman.

The organization has grown to over 65 members from all segments of entertainment and communications. What united our members under the MEF banner is their committed to growing mobile media as a major component of their revenue, whether they are a technology company, a broadcaster, a record label or a mobile games company. The diversity of our membership reflects the diversity of the industry and points to the need for a Forum where views and opinions can be shared on how the industry can grow faster. Our objective is to bridge the gap between entertainment and communication through advocacy, education and the launch of specific MEF initiatives.

The emphasis is on growing mobile revenues responsibly. Companies join MEF in order to play a leading role in setting the right commercial parameters in this evolving new industry. The coming together of the traditional entertainment and mobile industries certainly creates a need to develop a common understanding of how this business is emerging such that sensible business models are adopted allowing all players to participate in creating end user value. MEF members are addressing vital issues such as the adoption of mobile digital rights management and the creation of mobile communities.

Both of these initiatives are led by members who have come together to share information and learning in order for others to understand how they can participate in the creation of this new business. We also believe it is very important to communicate this learning and the opportunities created by mobile entertainment to those new to the industry, in particular those in the traditional entertainment and media industries.

An example of how MEF has helped move the mobile entertainment business forward is the recent launch of the MEF’s UK ringtones chart, which measures, publicizes and legitimizes the development of this growing market. The Mobile Entertainment Forum is also looking to ensure that the right regulation gets adopted –one that provides sensible guidelines for protecting consumers whilst ensuring healthy revenues for all players. Hence, our Regulatory Committee has recently submitted comments to the EU’s e-Money Directive and how it applies to mobile.

“All boats float with the incoming tide.” We are at the early stage of a new industry called mobile entertainment. It is vital that all parts of the mobile entertainment business have a common voice and recommend ways to resolve core issues and help the market grow. This is what I believe the Forum is providing to its members. A common voice.

Tell me about PacketVideo Network Solutions?

To keep with the boat and tide analogy, PacketVideo Network Solutions (pvNS) provides software for the “boats” who want to enrich the mobile media experience with video and music. The company is owned by Alcatel, and was formerly a division of PacketVideo. With over 20 commercial launches worldwide, pvNS is recognized as the leading provider of software solutions centered around the pvServer to mange and distribute mobile video and audio services.

Right from day one the sole focus of pvNS has been the creation of products and services for mobilemedia.

PacketVideo Network Solutions has chosen to employ AAC as their mobile music format. Can you tell me what drew you to AAC?

Like any other technology company when it comes to formats we have to be agnostic. We can run bench tests and believe that one format is better than another, but if that format doesn’t make it onto devices then we shouldn’t be backing it. For mobile music it’s fair to say that AAC (and AAC+) is our preferred format simply because it provides the consumer with the best experience.

It also happens to be the format that has been adopted as part of the 3GPP standard and will find its way in more devices than any other format on the market. That being said, we’ll work with other formats too – whether proprietary or open.

Can you tell us a little about your IBC session this year? What are you hoping to cover?

I’m very honored since this year I’m actually participating in two panels at IBC.

The first is on mobile devices and networks (The business of handhelds – who will survive – Saturday 11 September at 14.00 – 15.30 hrs. Location: Room L) and the second is on the new business models surrounding the broadcast business (Future Business Models – Sunday 12 September. at 16.00 – 17.45 hrs Location: Forum). Both have extremely provocative titles and are chaired by great people (Bernard Pauchon of TDF, and Kate Bulkley who writes about this space).

My views on both topics will be very mobile user centric. Although there are many different networks (GPRS, 3G, DMB, WiFi, DVB-H etc…) and many different creators and owners of digital content, there is only one end user.

This end user wants personalized, real time, and localized content. If you look at the value of the ring tone business (roughly 2.5 Billion dollars in 2003) you realize that it is almost 10% of the value of the music industry! Now the question: Are people paying to listen to the music or to personalize their phones?

Clearly content is going mobile and content on a mobile is only “king” if it provides that added value which is created through personalization. Some are calling it conversational content…others communitainment.

The mobile phone is the most personal content receiver we have in our possession and there are now over a billion of them worldwide. This is just the beginning.

Broadcasters are catching on to mobile phones as a revenue stream and way to extend brands – will customers pay for content they might get free through the internet or television?
The simple answer is no. The way broadcasters are generating money on mobile is by using mobile networks as reply paths. The advent of reality TV and the ability for audience participation via SMS has blown away the level of interactivity expected by the iTV industry. Ask any mobile operator what the impact of Endemol has been on the mobile data business.

The question to ask now is, will the operator networks or even broadcast networks be able to deliver valuable content to mobile devices? The answer is yes, but not without a serious effort in understanding the new time and space dimensions created with the mobile. The value to the user is directly proportional to the contents ability to relate to the new dimensions of time and space being created.

Content will be valuable once it is wrapped into a service or application combining in real time, communication, personalization, and localization.

Think about how you feel when you grab your mouse to surf the web. Your attitude is “what can I get for free?”

When you connect with your mobile, you are conscious of the fact that each connection and each transaction results in money being spent. Therefore you are more disposed to pay for the right content. I am particularly curious to what happens with the overlay of location based services on mobile networks. This will result in “localized” content which also have a profound impact on end user value creation.

Do you see the mobile phone eventually replacing all of the devices we carry around with us from day to day – like our music players and wallets?
It’s tempting to say yes, but my answer is just a little more subtle. I think the phone will morph into a device that can carry out all these functions and more, but I don’t think that means it’ll replace all these other devices. I think it will certainly be our main portable electronic device and I think for those times that we want to carry one device we’ll choose the phone.

However there will be times that we’ll want to carry a specialist device that’s designed to do just one task insanely well.

A 5 Megapixel digital camera for instance. For a long flight I may still want a bespoke machine for watching films on a 15 cm portable screen, and there’ll probably be a bespoke music player that offers more functionality than a phone for a long time to come.

So it’ll be horses for courses – but the phone will be the no.1 portable electronic device. It is unique, addressable, and affordable.

Patrick is a panellist in the ‘Future Business Models‘ session between 16:00 and 17:45 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

Packet Video Network Solutions

Cellular Cinema

Zoie Films, a company who support and promote independent films and film makers have launched the world’s first film festival for mobile phones. The festival will be held every December and is intended to showcase content and technology and will be screened via Tin Can Mobile to Nokia handsets. More than a hundred independent film makers are expected to submit work showing exactly what can be achieved on a 2” TFT.

Films must be at least one minute long, but under five minutes and can be submitted on a number of formats including MPEG, WMV or VHS. Entry fees are between US$35 and US$45 (€28.77 to €37).

Winners will be screened at zoiefilms.com and via Tin Can Mobile, and prizes include a week at a golf resort spa in the Phillipines.

Zoie Films

Nokia and Vodafone to lead mobile Java standards

There is a lot of effort being applied by the mobile phone industry to unification and the current round is the attempt to unify Java on mobiles. The two currently largest players, Nokia and Vodafone, today announced the formation of a “mobile service architecture initiative” that will bring “open unified mobile Java services architecture”.

Software developers currently have major headaches when trying to develop software that will run on the handsets of different manufacturers, leading to many version of the same programme having to be written.

The central tenet of the Vodafone/Nokia idea is to actually bring the once-touted but soon forgotten ideal of Java, Write Once Run Anywhere – the ability to write an application and for it to work on any Java-enabled devices. The announcement puts it much less succinctly; “This will enable application compatibility across multi-vendor mobile devices.” Their phrasing also gives them the get out clause of “multi-vendor”, not meaning Anywhere.

It’s not just the two biggest names involved in this, as Orange, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and T-Mobile International have given their support to the idea. As you would expect with anything involving Java, Sun Microsystems are also heavily involved.

One of the areas that is being highlighted are the Security enhancements, which interestingly include the ability to management software components to mobile over-the-air – great for updating functionality, or heaven forbid, fixing bugs.

Alan Harper, Group Strategy Director at Vodafone, said: “It will build upon the JTWI (Java Technology for Wireless Industry) vision, and output from other industry groups, to create an open and evolving platform roadmap to enable consistent and predictable implementation on a wide range of mobile devices.”

Having a near-unified platform to write for can only be good for developers of software applications for mobile phones, and therefore the advancement of the mobile handset as means to access services.

The participants of the initiative have committed to deploy the platform, and the first reference implementations are scheduled for next year.

The continued strength of Java as a development platform for mobile phones is of paramount importance in the mobile industry, providing continued resistance of Windows dominating mobiles as well as computers. To date Microsoft’s attempts at this haven’t been a resounding success.

Tuning In To Visual Radio

Nokia has high hopes for a new service that sends images and information to mobile phones, synchronised to a FM radio station.

Nokia's 7700 showing Visual Radio A new revenue stream

Mobile phone manufacturers and network operators are developing more and more virtual products for their subscribers – ringtones, wallpapers, games, music, you name it. The favoured charging model preferred by networks is a little but often, hence subscriptions to text alerts, music downloads and other services that extract small amounts of cash from users repeatedly, over a relatively long period.

Given the age of many phone owners, music is an important part of their lifestyle, and so consumes a fair chunk of disposable income – this is what prompted manufacturers to converge the mobile phone with the radio. Whilst it’s certainly handy, there was always an air of missing potential about having a mobile with a radio – two communications streams that didn’t meet up: until now, that is.

Radio met GPRS – and Visual Radio was born.

Visual Radio (VR) is a traditional radio broadcast, backed up and accompanied with information, photographs and graphics displayed on a compatible mobile phone. Handset owners can see immediately what track their favourite radio station is playing and explore more information about the artists, or see what’s coming up next. You can all see the potential for album promotions, competitions and quizzes – and advertising. The service can also be used to sell ringtones and logos – other micropayment-sized virtual goods popular with network operators.

Nokia describes the basic service thus: “You will never again have to wonder WHO is playing WHAT on radio – now you can get detailed information on any piece that is being played. During the news you can SEE what they are talking about, weather reports can now show you the maps and tables of sports results can easily be viewed. Entering the middle of a talk show, you can see what has been discussed so far and what is coming up next. Valuable business news or urgent news alerts can be received at any time onto your screen without having to interrupt the broadcast over the air.”

It also enables radio stations to interact in new ways with their audience – by allowing listeners to vote on popular topics, and getting input from people who perhaps would never phone into a show, but would like to interact nonetheless.

VR is currently available on the rather odd looking Nokia 7700, but the company intends to release more compatible handsets in the future.

How does it work?

The system itself is extremely simple: Visual Radio runs in parallel with a traditional radio broadcast, and is transmitted to the user’s handset via GPRS.

A reasonably informative and immersive service can be transmitted in about 200 kilobits per hour, but can vary enormously depending on the amount of graphics used on the service.

The attractive part here is that there’s no additional subscription for the end-user to have to buy into or extra payment system – she just pays for the GPRS data on her mobile phone bill as she would normally.

The service is currently only available for FM broadcasts, but there’s no reason why it can’t be deployed for AM stations, and indeed Nokia are exploring this.

Nokia has selected HP as its technology partner to bring VR to the market. HP sells the solution to mobile operators and FM radio stations worldwide, as well as provides installation, consulting and integration support. In addition, HP hosts and manages the VR service using standards-based HP platforms.

The VR application is part of the phone software, embedded in the handset’s hardware, and is not a downloadable application. This strikes me as odd: why not make it a Series 60 application and therefore deployable to all Series 60 phones with FM receivers?

What does it take to produce a Visual Radio feed?

VR is basically an XML feed sent to the phone’s browser through a standard GPRS connection. It’s simpler than HTML – there are fixed regions on the phone’s display, and certain content types can only go in those regions. By positioning objects relatively on the screen, similarly to web stylesheets, pages can scale to suit phones with different sized displays.

Graphics are highly optimised, and the preferred format is PNG, keeping button sizes, for example, down to typically less than 1k.

One page of VR, or slide, can be less than 3k in data.

Pages are extremely easy to create, and the process doesn’t get in the way for producing imaginative content – keeping punters interested beyond the novelty stage will be the tricky part. No special tools are required – once the basic templates are worked out, the station (or a third party) can use use an off the shelf package like Dreamweaver to layout pages.

The pages are also timecoded – so that the content is synchronised with the broadcast, images are cached to the phone so that slides are complete and ready when a song starts.

Once the VR pages are produced, they are sent via the internet to a hosting centre operated by HP, and then sent to network operators who transmit them to handsets, on a region by region basis.
A side view of the 7700 What’s the business model?

VR is essentially a low bandwidth sales tool. VR users pay for the GPRS data they download – and hopefully buy ringtones and other products advertised on it. The network operator also splits the money made from the GPRS streams with the radio station responsible for the broadcast. The radio station also has a new channel to sell. advertising on.

Sophisticated monitoring facilities are built into the service: the network operator can see how many “listeners” are tuned into the visual radio stream at any one time – providing valuable metrics for the radio station and its advertisers. This also enables the broadcaster to vary the amount of bandwidth and other resources deployed in response to demand.

Where is it?

Visual Radio is currently being transmitted by Helsinki’s KissFM station, and is available to TeleSonera subscribers.

Nokia has a chicken and egg situation here – it needs to sell the idea of Visual Radio to broadcasters as a popular service, but it also needs a range of content to entice users to take part. So far, uptake from both broadcasters and the public is disappointing – but it’s early days.

Visual Radio

Nokia’s Five New Phones

Nokia have been accused of some rather dull designs over the past year, whilst Sony Ericsson and Motorola have pushed ahead with fashionable handsets packed with smartphone features.

To combat this, Nokia have just unveiled their new range – five handsets, three of which are clamshell designs. Nokia have steered clear of the clamshell phone format up until now, whilst other manufacturers have embraced it and made it popular. Nokia’s dull phone portfolio may have earned it that drop in market share reported by Gartner: down to 28.9% in Q1 2004, from 34.6% in Q1 2003.

“We have now sharpened our product portfolio in key areas, bringing new phones to the market in the mid-range, and adding more clamshells to our offering,” said Nokia chief executive officer Jorma Ollila.

The three main phones are aimed at business and leisure users, with a further two “affordable”, entry-level models with less features. Having said that, “less features” still manages to include colour displays and some rather nice styling.

The first of the main phones is the 6630, a smartphone based on the Series 60 operating system, and is the first dual-mode tri-band phone for 3G networks. Nokia also claim that it’s the World’s smallest 3G phone. Somehow, they’ve managed to get a megapixel camera and an MP3 player in there too.

For business customers, the 6260 incorporates push to talk technology and a VGA camera into its fold design. Nokia describe it thus: “it is more than just a clamshell, it’s a fold with a twist!” Just stick to designing phones, guys.

The 6170 is another clamshell camera phone, in stainless steel no less, with push to talk and the usual five hundred or so features.

These phones are all interesting because it looks like Nokia are finally starting to listen to the criticism they’ve faced over the last 18 months and are innovating – also what is now classed as an entry-level phone has a level of sophistication unthinkable just two years ago. After network providers accused phone manufacturers of not having suitable handsets available, 3G phones are finally moving into the mass-market.

For my money, Nokia’s new keyboard gadget is a winner. Remember those chat boards that were popular a few years ago for keying in text messages on your mobile? Nokia have a Bluetooth wireless keyboard for all that now, and it even folds up. When GPRS means that email is on the move is much more usable these days, this keyboard will save lots of fingers and eyesight. Just as well, considering how tiny the phones are now.

Nokia’s new phones

Bluetooth keyboard

China: 300 Million Mobile Users by 2005

The Chinese Ministry for Industry has released new figures which demonstrate the vast scale of the mobile market in China, and its potential for growth.

Although the percentage of mobile phone owners in China will still be relatively low at just 24.5% of the population in 2005, this will still mean 300 million subscribers. In contrast, approximately 65% of Europeans own a mobile phone, with the US catching up at 50%.

Currently, China’s 295,700,000 mobile phones account for half of all money spent communications. There are still another 800 million potential customers to reach, though the barriers of bringing access to rural areas and the cost of services must yet be dealt with.

Chinese mobile users send 300 million text messages a day – accounting for one third of the World’s total 510 billion of SMS sent every in 2003. Not bad for something that was tacked onto GSM as a afterthought and costs network operators virtually nothing to handle.

China Mobile

Picture Messaging Slow in the UK

Although picture messaging seems very popular with troops in Iraq at the moment, the service is yet to make any impact in the UK, says a survey by NOP.

Texting took a while to take off – but look what happened when it eventually did. Network providers are hoping for much the same thing – in fact, Sicap, who provide messaging products to mobile operators are rather hoping that Euro 2004 and the Olympic games will lure customers into MMS adoption.

There are two main reasons given for the lack of messaging: 45% don’t have a handset (kind of crucial, really – and also applies if your friends don’t have any either), and 17% don’t know how to send them. Odd then, that they would go to the expense of buying such a well-featured phone. But given that I still receive text messages THAT LOOK LIKE THIS, then it’s not surprising that people only have a limited amount of patience in learning how things work.

Indeed, on the rare occasions when I venture out, there seems to be little use of picture phones in real life situations. Phone users tend to take a few snaps when they first get their new phone, but after a while apathy, privacy infringement fears and the hail of tutting from those nearby soon dampen any enthusiasm for sending your mates a picture of the great time you’re pretending to have.

“The findings of our survey highlight that we will still have a lot more to do as an industry to encourage consumers to embrace MMS in the same way as they have SMS,” said Per-Johan Lundin, Head of Marketing, Sicap. “The first goal is to drive as many MMS compatible handsets into the hands of users as possible. Secondly, the services need to extremely user friendly like Vodafone Live. But the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle is compelling content. Some of this will be generated by users themselves but a lot will need to be generated around the content that consumers are really interested in like sports.”

If picture messaging is this slow in the UK, then you can bet it’s nowhere in the US, which tends to drag behind Europe in the mobile market.

Sicap

Flarion and Vodafone Trial High Speed Wireless Internet in Tokyo

It’s now over to the politicians. Nobody who has seen Flarion’s sales pitch has failed to be impressed by “what if?” this technology were available. Faster than 3G and covering more users at the same time, with far lower network latency – if we had this, there wouldn’t be all the discussion about WiFi phones. But the technology looked to be illegal.

Now, in a deal with Vodafone which covers metro Tokyo Flarion is going to get the test bed it needs to convince the world’s Governments to allow this technology in existing spectra.

The barrier to Flarion’s Flash-OFDM wireless is that the GSM and 3G network operators are licensed, pretty much anywhere in the world, to provide a voice service using specific technology on their masts. And Flarion offers a pure IP network, which is neither WCDMA nor GSM.

Of course, you can carry voice over IP networks; but the small print doesn’t appear to explicitly allow a voice network to be done this way, and often, specifically insists on GSM or WCDMA technology. And politicians are wary of buying into a new technology, because there are powerful lobbies threatening to take real money off them if they do.

The problem is that in all too many countries, huge sums have been raised in 3G phone auctions. If the various Governments who conducted these auctions suddenly rendered 3G obsolete by licensing a new system, the calls for refunds would be loud and strident.

On the other hand, if the mobile phone companies initiated the move, they’d be effectively conceding that they didn’t care about the original high-priced licence rip-off.

The trial is being described as low key and routine, by Vodafone: “Vodafone undertakes technical trials of emerging technologies to ensure we are well positioned to drive future research into mobile system solutions,” said today’s announcement. “Such programmes also enable Vodafone to respond quickly to commercial opportunities with specific market requirements should the need arise,” said Professor Michael Walker, Vodafone Group Research and Development Director.

The mobile broadband trial will start in mid 2004 and will cover metropolitan areas of Tokyo. Vodafone “will conduct field tests of Flarion’s system performance, user mobility, subscriber scalability, robustness, and transparent delivery of enterprise and consumer applications over an end-to-end IP network infrastructure.”

The trial will use Flarion’s commercially available FLASH-OFDM PC card modems for laptops and PDAs, to field test broadband Internet access, enterprise productivity applications, as well as gaming.

No mention of voice in that, but if it works as described, VoIP (voice over IP) trials will certainly be part of it. That was demonstrated at CTIA in Atlanta, in March.

But this isn’t the first public trial. In America, Nextel has a customer paying network in the high-tech nexus of Raleigh-Durham, and that has been public since mid last year. that network is a commercial which covers 1,300 square miles, in which there are 1.1 m people including residential, small businesses, and four of the largest American universities. The intention is to have 10,00 subscribers by end of this year, and there are around 130 mast sites. So it is a large substantial network.

The Vodafone trial, by contrast, will be just 7-8 sites; for purely technical testing.

Exactly how well Flash-OFDM works in a live application is an issue that many experts have debated. In theory, in Flarion’s white papers, FLASH (Fast Low-latency Access with Seamless Handoff) has an average downlink speed of 1.5 megabits per second – somewhere between five and six times the data rate of WCMDA 3G phones. Also in theory, it can handle far more simultaneous users, between two and three times, according to Flarion’s own estimates.

The technology is based on work done in Bell Labs, and inherited by Lucent, which spun Flarion off in February 2000. So – after Qualcomm – some industry analysts are very nervous about building an industry standard around a single intellectual property owner again.

The real appeal, however is that FLASH-OFDM allows for low latency access. Latency, the time wasted by a network while it processes data internally, is down to LAN standards.

The latency of a 2.5 G network can be enormous. The GPRS standard actually permits delays of over 10 seconds – 800 ms and above is the agreed specification. Ten seconds is not that unusual, if the user is moving from one cell to another. Nearly all Internet based software will assume the link is broken if delays on that scale occur, and will time out or crash.

Latency of WCDMA is far lower, but still can reach large fractions of a second. In an unloaded network it would be 250 ms; as you load the net, it can be one second and above.

Flarion has said that average sustained latency of Flash-OFDM is below 50 milliseconds, and can be far lower. This will be one key factor which Vodafone will evaluate in live trials. Trials in Europe with “an operator” (Flarion can’t disclose which) ran at 28 ms average.

Also, Vodafone will want to assess IP Quality of Service (QoS), and Flarion’s claims of “high spectral efficiency and full mobility” and “ubiquitous, LAN-like user experience” claims, too. Flarion categorises standard Third generation (3G) mobile networks as “circuit-switched, hierarchical architectures.” You are connected to a given end-point during the whole of a call, rather than sending packets into a true packet switched IP network, they say: consequently “there is tension between the design objectives and the current environment of the wired Internet and mobile voice networks. The resulting design compromises of circuit-switched networks, which are optimised for voice, impair their ability to deliver high-speed, low-latency data cost effectively.”

If Flarion is right, the big saving is cost to the operator. “The resulting high cost-per-megabyte of data delivery over circuit-switched based networks will prevent the emergence of mass-market wireless Internet access. An alternative approach, focusing directly on high speed, low cost and low latency wireless data delivery is required. Flarion, through its innovative FLASH-OFDM airlink, addresses the challenge of delivering affordable mobile broadband.”

Joe Barrett, EMEA marketing director at Flarion, said that the politics of Flash-OFDM isn’t as sensitive as some people think. “European regulations don’t have the same force as the original GSM Directive, when it comes to 3G,” he told NewsWireless. “In any case, the recommendations on which the contracts were based for 3G have now expired. The contracts do mandate whatever they say, but there’s no regulation requiring that they can’t be varied.”

And, he believes, European legislators are becoming less prescriptive.

“They want to ensure that different bands are used for the purpose intended, but they aren’t insisting on technology any more,” he said.

Flarion site

Data-over-DAB: GWR/BT partnership announced

The widespread understanding of DAB is in its use to provide the next generation of radio and many have found the advantages that the CD-quality audio broadcast bring.

We at Digital-Lifestyles have been excited about using DAB to broadcast data efficiently to many devices since 2002 when it first came to our attention. DAB has a theoretical total output of up to 1.7 Mbits per second and has the major advantage that is broadcast. The costs of distribution of content is fixed, no matter how many people receive it, – the opposite to other data delivery channels such as GRPS or 3G.

Last year we saw a number of devices being demonstrated at IBC2003, some which used GSM and DAB, others combined GPRS and DAB, all featured the receipt of data over DAB and the provision of a back channel over the cellular services.

A number of trials have also been run. There was a six month trial in the UK which started in October 2003, run by Capital Radio PLC, NTL Broadcast and RadioScape Ltd which delivered Dolby 5.1 surround sound over live Internet Protocol (IP) datacasting using the Windows Media 9 Pro CoDec.

Today we are pleased to see that UK broadcaster GWR and BT wholesale have come together to create a new digital multi-media UK broadcast operation. The new entity will create mobile broadcast services to deliver multi-media content such as news, sports and entertainment. They plan to launch a London-wdie service during 2005, and expand across the Uk in 2006.

The new venture will utilise Digital One’s digital broadcasting capacity, running alongside eight national digital radio stations. Digital One is 63% owned by GWR. The rest of details for the deal are fairly complex and we would suggest reading the press release to get a full understanding, but GWR are confident of additonal earnings from it with an estimated £5m in the year ending March 2008.

Data over DAB sounds like a great idea – it is but sadly there are currently a couple of obstacles to everyone receiving broadband-type delivery speeds of content to portable handsets.

The most significant is that enshrined in UK law is a restriction on the balance between the bandwidth that must be used audio broadcast and that for data. The original 1996 Broadcasting Act specified that data must take up no more that 10% but in a 1998 review by the Secretary of State this was changed 20% of the multiplex over a 24 hours period. Glyn Jones, Operations Director of Digital One told Digital-Lifestyles that through negotiation with the UK regulator OFCOM they have agreed to alter their licence by changing two of the radio services original included Digital One’s licence – a rolling news service from ITN and a financial information service from Bloomberg – which were withdrawn in 2002. They will be replaced with the GWR/BT wholesale service and Digital One is confident that this will not exceed their 20% data allocation.

DAB receiver cards have been developed as add-ons for portable devices, but there will be a delay before it becomes mass market as the DAB chipsets need to be incorporated into mobile phones and devices before it can really fly.

Keep your eye on this one. We feel it is still a very exciting means of wide spread delivery of content.

Examples of possible services provided by GWR/BT:

News and sport: – There would be no need to dial-up to find out the news & sport. Every time the user picks up the device the very latest information will be available to browse. It is similar to having a news portal on the phone without the need to pay each time the user wants to look at it nor the wait to dial-up and down load information. It is already there and can be used 24/7 for a low fixed fee.

Traffic congestion: – Breaking traffic and travel updates would be always available on the phone or PDA, ready to be checked when the user is on the move. There would be no need to dial-up each time to discover delays, the information is constantly pushed onto the phone memory and can be accessed for a low fixed cost. The latest information replaces out of date information automatically making it very efficient and simple to use.

Live entertainment device – the mobile phone or PDA becomes a live entertainment device as it will automatically receive games downloads and movie previews to be played at any time. Games can be played at any time with others using the mobile phone connection as well as movie clips forwarded.

Stock market information – the PDA could have a stock market ticker and share updates constantly refreshing. There is no need to dial-up for the latest business and financial information as it is directly broadcast to the device.

GWR Press release – GWR and BT create mobile digital datacasting operation

Dis/located Drama – Mobile Bristol in Queen Square in Bristol

1831 Riot! – “an interactive play for voices” played in Queen Square in Bristol until 4th May. The play is the latest fruit of the Mobile Bristol project – a collaboration between HP Labs, the University of Bristol and the Appliance Studio, which is working to overlay a wireless ‘digital canvas’ on the city and to explore the social and creative possibilities enabled by such a fabric.

Queen Square is the largest square in England outside London, dating from the early 18th century and recently restored to genteel, leafy tranquility following the removal in 2000 of a dual carriageway driven diagonally across the square in 1936. It was also the scene of some of the most significant events of the 1831 riot in Bristol – which was instrumental in the eventual passage of the 1832 Reform Act significantly increasing the number of men who had the vote and starting Britain on the road to universal suffrage.

The current production is a specially commissioned piece which attempts a documentary style, fictionalised recreation of some of the key events of the riot which took place in and around the square. To experience the drama you visit a stand on one side of the square to pick up a small backpack containing a GPS enabled iPaq, a large pair of stereo headphones and an A4 flyer providing a brief explanation of the project, but woefully little background on the riots themselves. You are then free to wander the square at will until you have exhausted the experience, your enthusiasm or your stamina.

On the morning that Richard Higgs and I visited it was bright, sunny and warm. As we strolled around the square different segments of audio were triggered as we moved between different areas. The effect was most like tuning in to the middle of an afternoon play on Radio 4, with similar production values and the same instantly identifiable style – a somewhat ironic choice for a riot. Even knowing the nature of the beast there was a strong tendency to try and construct a coherent story of the events from the fragments available, which was far from easy – perhaps appropriately for a riot.

Despite wandering around the square side by side we often found that what we were hearing at any given time differed – sometimes due to a simple time lag and sometimes due to hearing different segments on different visits to the same area. Our movements clearly triggered some, but not all, of the changes to what we were hearing and it was hard to distinguish such changes from simple scene changes within a segment.

The headphones were large, well padded and effectively blocked out external noise – this made it difficult to conduct the intermittent conversation with which we peppered our walk. It also had the strange effect of divorcing us from our surroundings much like listening to music on a Walkman or an iPod, which seemed at odds with the very idea of interactive locative media. I would have been happier with something that allowed the mundane noises of the square on the day to bleed into the authored experience rather than trying to cut them out.

Although we were left feeling that full the potential hadn’t quite been realised, it is early days for this kind of experience design and 1831 Riot! is a valiant and at least partially successful attempt to paint something interesting and worthwhile on the digital canvas.

Bristol Wireless