TELECOMS & MOBILE
PacketVideo expects mobile video by 2002
03-08-2001
by Andrew McLindon
A US wireless software company has said that it expects video streaming over mobile phones to be available to consumers in Europe by the end of this year.
PacketVideo Europe, a San Diego start-up with European offices in London, Paris and Nice, said it expects GPRS (2.5G) networks to be able to handle content such as movie trailers, and news and sports clips by the latter part of 2001.
However he said he expects initial mobile streaming video services to be niche focused, with a broader adoption of the technology over time.
"Most of the mobile operators' 2.5G networks will be able to handle between 25 and 30 kilobits per second and that should be sufficient to stream video that looks pretty good," Jim Cook, PacketVideo's general manager for Europe, told ElectricNews.Net.
PacketVideo's second-generation platform PVPlatform 2.0 makes multimedia viable over 2.5G networks and delivers video over wireless at data rates of 14.4 kilobits per second and higher. Set-up in 1998, the company's investors include Siemens, Sony, AOL Time Warner and Intel.
The company is currently testing its technology in eleven countries including Spain, Finland, Germany and the UK. In Finland, for instance, its trial partner Sonera Mspace offers its users various types of rich media content including news and travel information, and sports highlights over their mobiles.
Cook said that the company is interested in the Irish market, but declined to comment on whether it has had discussions with any Irish mobile operators.
According to Cook, mobile operators will soon be able offer multimedia services over 2.5G such as salesforce training, voice mail with video clips and video surveillance. "It will be possibly, for instance, to watch your child via its day care centre's Web cam."
He said services will initially be information based or entertainment led and that two-way communication, for instance, will probably have to wait for the arrival of 3G. "Two-way video calls will be a 3G feature," commented Cook.
However, Eircell's head of mobile data, Tadgh Cotter, does not believe that streaming video will have such an immediate impact over 2.5G.
"It is going to take some time before we see good quality video content being available over GPRS. It is the way forward, but if you look at the evolution of wireless it has been text, then it will be colour, then graphics with some animation, and then video. It will be six to 12 months before we even see animation and that depends, of course, on the availability of appropriate handsets," he told ElectricNews.Net.
Cotter said he believed that video streaming is unlikely to be seen until the advent of 3G. "For instance, a large spectrum will be needed to handle one million users trying to view a two minute video clip and that spectrum won't be available until 3G comes on-line."
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