Show Daily: Service providers planning mobile TV rollouts have several technology options in front of them. Assuming spectrum availability has already been sorted, what criteria should they have in mind when planning their services‾
Torbjorn Nilsson: Interactivity, tariffs, international roaming and content for mobiles. End-users are requiring large numbers of TV channels, as well as a large variety of downloadable video clips. Operators need to carefully plan which channels and video clips to be provided via broadcast capabilities (MBMS and/or DVB-H) and which are to be supported via Unicast capabilities (HSDPA).
Offerings and pricing schemes need to adapted for various segments, and advertising models will have to be introduced with great care to lower end-user charges and get customer acceptance. Today, the most widespread system for mobile TV is Unicast through 3G/HSPA networks.
Operators are deploying separate networks like DVB-H for mobile TV, but some might be tempted to wait for MBMS. How can early adopters best leverage both‾
Early adopters can use Unicast already today with channel zapping down to two seconds. By upgrading their 3G networks with HSDPA speeds will improve, resulting in better image quality for the end-user and lower costs per TV/video stream. This in combination with the new handsets that now are coming to the market using new video codecs (H.264) and higher resolution (QVGA) screens make it possible to address market volume needs during 2007. The next step after that is to add broadcast capabilities in 2008 with MBMS for those TV channels that are so popular that they really need broadcast capacity or use DVB-H as a broadcast complement for those popular TV channels.
What is Ericsson's view on evolving IMS to better handle apps and services that do not use SIP‾
3GPP has specified both IMS and SAE that together cover most of 'Advances to IMS' (A-IMS). The difference should be harmonized in 3GPP.
HSDPA seems to be gaining initial traction by targeting laptop users rather than handset users. What does this mean going forward for upcoming services like mobile WiMAX‾
HSPA is today targeting mobile FDD spectrum and is being rolled out commercially now. Mobile WiMAX is initially targeting TDD spectrum with commercial operations in the 2008 timeframe.
The focus of mobile evolution has turned to consumer needs, not technology per se: ease of use, social networking, user-generated content, etc.
How is Ericsson keeping track of the end-user zeitgeist, and what are you hearing‾