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PacketVideo expects mobile video by 2002
Friday, August 03 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."