Mobile TV - time to grow

Mobile TV is one of the burning issues carrying a lot of complexities
and headache for the engineers,as they have to compete against the traditional TV screen quality and content delivery offer of ever better viewing experiences.

What are still the problems?
In Europe the debate continues to rage over what standard should be adopted for mobile TV, holding back the adaptation rate.Some 3G networks are struggling to cope with the capacity needed to stream live video and TV.

But I would really like to focus on the EU forecasts, European Commission estimates that the world mobile TV market will be worth a whopping 11.4 billion euros (15.5 billion dollars) by 2009. That makes things to move faster, more R&D investing to meet the number, but is that a pragmatic goal? It is really a growing industry, since the mobile content industry today is worth some 20 billion dollars, nearly as much as the 30-billion-dollar Internet business. Most of that revenue, though, continues to be ringtone-driven rather than mobile entertainment content. Imagine the boom when the content becomes the king and the mobile commerce grows as well! Might grow far beyond the Internet revenues.
Mobile TV is a new platform for advertising. The Korean service is free and ad-supported.The two mobile Korean TV broadcast platforms together have a staggering 4.5 million subscribers.
France Telecom reports that clients would be willing to pay around seven euros a month for the service. SFR clients pay 12 euros a month to subscribe to its 3G mobile TV service that offers 80 channels experiencing a 50% subsribers' growth the last 3 months.

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CITI- Call for papers

We are on for a new call for papers toward the book on Ultrabroadband networks, I prepare with Eli Noam. The next CITI conference is on the June 22nd and the CFP is already out, with deadline May the 1st.

France Telecom and the International Journal of Law and Communications Policy are our collaborators, looking forward to bringing more big names in the project.
France Telecom is one of the big thinkers, far ahead than British Telecom, planning soon to deploy ultrabroadband speed home networks.

Happy Easter

Although I was in Greece during Christmas, am gonna spend Easter holidays in the Big Apple.
Lots of work on the UltraBB III event, as we are on the propaganda phase, developing the collaborations and the Web interface. Spring break in Queens College, allows for some emphasis on my PhD work and catch up on some business deals and opportunities. Next week I am visiting Virginia for a CRM seminar. CRM and ERP are hot topics in the industry now, they are on demand. This seminar and the material will support my Marketing classes and expecting some good networking too.
Catching up with friends in the traditional Easter dinner in Astoria, after the church, with plenty of wine and Greek music, a real Greek happening.

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UltraBB New Verizon

Verizon starts deploying G-PON technology to implement its FTTH plans, having as major provider Alcatel-Lucent. This company is seriously back after the restructuring, winning major deals in the US but also in other markets such as the deal with Australia's Telstra. FiOs services are now improved, since the end-user has over 1Gbps (2.4Gbps) network capacity. It might not be a bad idea to reserve some ALU stock, the stock is not doing great righ now, but it might pay off some attractive marginal profits in the future. I have the feeling that very soon they will get back in demand threatening Cisco's throne.

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MasterCard the frontier

Although MasterCard lost major market share and deals against Visa, now is trying to bounce back in new markets, trying Mobile Commerce, expected soon to take off after the current trial phase.
Discussing about a high-tech trend that in Japan is already adapted from 19 million users.
Currently Finland-based Nokia, the world's largest cell phone maker, is partnering with MasterCard to offer two cell phone payment
services. One of them will be tested at
7-Eleven stores, the other, at Cingular Wireless and Citigroup. Currently, another cell phone maker, Motorola, has three
trials underway, one involving Discover. Still security and theft could hold back the serious penetration in the USA.
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