Bringing Free Television To Phones In America

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 5, 2010 @09:11AM from the all-upside dept.

ideonexus writes "South Korea, China, Brazil, parts of Europe, and Japan have been watching television on their phones for free since 2005, but American mobile carriers are struggling to offer clunky streaming video using Qualcomm's proprietary MediaFLO system for an additional monthly fee and excessive bandwidth demands. Now, with America having gone digital in June, if Mobile carriers were to have ATSC M/H (advanced television systems committee — mobile/handheld) television-tuner chips built into their handsets it sounds like we could enjoy free TV on our cell phones too; however, these companies have already invested a great deal of money adapting their networks to Qualcomm's format and Qualcomm is considering becoming a mobile television distributor itself."

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Re:Europe, Japan,.. Use standards,, America by gangien · 2010-01-05 09:54 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Maybe it seems like it's working in this case, but what are the unseen costs? The problem with the government controlling things, is often these sort of unseen costs or unintended side affects. I have a cell phone, in the US and don't have much of a problem with it. Who cares if my provider uses it's own scheme? How is it, we still have not learned that socialism does not work?