AT&T Announces Mobile TV Service
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AT&T announced today that the nation’s largest wireless carrier will offer subscribers ten channels of live, mobile TV on at least two new phones starting in May.
AT&T Mobile TV uses Qualcomm’s MediaFLO system, which we reviewed last year with two Verizon phones. The MediaFLO system allows for at least 14 channels. AT&T and Verizon will share eight: CBS, Comedy Central, ESPN , FOX, MTV, NBC, NBC News, and Nickelodeon. AT&T will get two exclusive channels of their own, which Verizon customers won’t have access to.
Verizon, for its part, added two exclusive channels this week: ESPN Radio and a Latino-focused MTV spinoff, “MTV Tr3s”.
MediaFLO channels aren’t simulcasts of broadcast TV. Rather, they’re rearrangements of the TV schedule to play popular programs several times a day. Late night talk shows pop up during morning commuting hours, for instance, and the NBC channel mixes in both NBC network programs and popular shows from NBC’s Bravo cable channel.
Since AT&T uses the exact same mobile TV network as Verizon, we expect quality to be the same (excellent, just like ‘regular’ TV) and pricing plans to be the same (around $15/month.)
The Samsung Access will be AT&T’s more conventional, and presumably more affordable, TV phone. The Access is a small, slim candy-bar phone with a 2.3-inch screen and 1.3-megapixel camera. Like several other Samsung phones on AT&T, it features the Video Share service which lets you beam live video to people you’re calling. Using the 850/1900 Mhz 3G bands and quad-band EDGE, it can hit AT&T’s high-speed network here in the US and it roams to Europe at lower data speeds.
The LG Vu will offer a higher-end mobile TV experience. That phone is dominated by a 2.8-inch, 240-by-400 touch screen, and it has a 2-megapixel camera and full Web browser. The Vu’s interface is very similar to the LG Prada, which has an attractive interface of large, touch-screen icons and which vibrates when you touch a virtual key. To type messages on the touch screen, you can choose between a virtual QWERTY keyboard and a virtual phone keypad with predictive text. Like the Access but unlike the Prada, the Vu hits AT&T’s high-speed 3G network and also roams globally on EDGE.
We expect the Vu to get good mobile TV reception because it also has a huge, pull-out TV antenna. That strategy worked well for the LG VX9400, which has the best reception of Verizon’s MediaFLO TV phones.
AT&T didn’t announce pricing for the phones or service, but we’re sure to hear more at next week’s CTIA Wireless trade show.
