Mobile TV gathers momentum

Everyday in Switzerland, 40 000 people watch a 100-second television news broadcast on their cellphones. In Italy, one million people pay as much as 19 euro a month to watch up to a dozen mobile TV channels, reports IHT.com.

Tiny TV, the kind that is watched on a cellphone, is spreading beyond Japan and South Korea, where it has been available for about three years. Mobile operators across Europe and the US are investing in new broadcasting towers, mobile devices, TV programming and promotions - even though it is not yet clear that viewers and profits will follow.

AT&T Wireless, with 71.4 million phone customers, recently started AT&T Mobile TV in the US. The 10-channel service, priced at $15 a month, includes Pix, a channel with movies from Sony Pictures. AT&T will sell cellphones made by LG Electronics and Samsung that can receive the TV broadcasts.

Two months after the Arab League ratified a charter that would allow governments to revoke satellite channels' licences for reasons ranging from disrupting national unity to showing consumption of alcohol or smoking, Egypt has seemingly begun a crackdown on local and international channels, says Egypt Today.

It has already shut down three stations and raided the Cairo News Company office, confiscating satellite transmission equipment that broadcasts breaking news for over 40 channels, including Al Jazeera, Dubai TV and France TV.

While the state security forces offered no reason for the raid, minister of information Anas Al-Fiqi said in a news conference in February that Egypt would be the first to implement the Satellite Broadcasting Charter, leaving many worried that recent actions are influenced by the document.

Atos Origin, worldwide Olympic partner for the Beijing Olympics, and the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG) Technology Department announced on the 100-day countdown to the Olympics that the first technology rehearsal for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad has been completed, reports Bocognews.

The test showed that technological staff, systems and procedures are in place for the Olympic Games, which will be held in August.

The three-day rehearsal tested more than 100 projects and involved IT systems and communications, information security and media operations. More than 600 people from BOCOG, Atos Origin, Beijing Olympic Broadcasting and the official Web site of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, took part in the drill.

TV stations serving all markets in the US are airing digital television programming today, although most will continue to provide analogue programming through February 2009, says ABCLocal.

At that point, full-power TV stations will cease broadcasting on their current analogue channels, and the spectrum they use for analogue broadcasting will be reclaimed and put to other uses.

The Commission's digital tuner rule specified that as of 1 March 2007, all new TVs must include digital tuners. This rule prohibits the manufacture, import, or interstate shipment of any device containing an analogue tuner, unless it also contains a digital tuner.