IPWireless Delivers TDtv For Mobile TV

IPWireless Inc. on Wednesday launched TDtv, a Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) mobile television platform that delivers broadcasts on the 3G spectrum.

Telecommunication carriers across Europe and Asia in 2000 spent billions to develop a 3G spectrum and have been searching for the next big application to justify the investment. "The irony is broadcast technologies, such as MediaFlow from Qualcomm, can't deliver over the 3G spectrum," said Jon Hambidge, vice president of marketing at IPWireless.

TDtv operates in the universal 3G spectrum bands at 1900MHz and 2010MHz. It allows Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) operators to use existing spectrum and base stations to offer subscribers mobile television and multimedia packages without impacting other voice and data 3G services.

Several operators in Europe are expected to announce TDtv trials in 1900MHz unpaired 3G spectrums during the first half of this year. In Japan, IPMobile plans to trial the technology for their services in their 2010MHz spectrum. The solution will also become available to operators in the other frequency bands that IPWireless supports globally, including the 2.5GHz band.

TDtv lets operators deliver up to 50 channels of TV for standard mobile phones, or 15 high-quality Quarter VGA channels over 5-MHz of unpaired 3G spectrum to allow an infinite number of customers to watch the same channel. IPWireless said operators that have 10-MHz spectrums in any supported band can deliver twice the number of channels or increase the quality of their service offerings.TDtv architecture is designed to integrate with WCDMA for networks and devices. The TDtv base stations can co-exit on the WCDMA sites without regulatory issues. The platform integrates with WCDMA at the core network, resulting in back-office integration.

IPWireless is partnering to integrate TDtv into existing WCDMA devices. Initial two-chip TD-CDMA/WCMDA handsets or larger screen devices will reuse much of the WCDMA RF to lower cost and reduce size. The plan is to integrate TDtv into WCDMA chipsets. "We can support 30 frames-per-second video and 50 channels on a cellular-phone size screen," Hambidge said. "Sprint can stream content at even higher rates for larger screens."

IPWireless has been working with Sprint Nextel, which owns a "huge amount of 2.5GHz spectrum," since June 2005 in the Washington DC area. In fact, the telecommunication company today announced it has made a second investment in IPWireless. Sprint Nextel said it has infused IPWireless with $10 million in addition to its initial $4 million. IPWireless has been successful in delivering the technology to provide "interesting multimedia content services over the network," Hambidge said. "You could download song tracks, digital radio or any multimedia content."