Watch soaps on your mobile

Sandip Das

Kitty party women needn't miss their favourite afternoon soaps on Zee TV and Sony when they lunch out. Nor will executives need to sneak over to the company TV set for a glimpse of a cricket match while at work.

Thanks to Hutch TV, all can now view TV shows on their mobile handsets. Telecom company Hutchison-Essar has launched its television clipping service on the mobile phone and has roped in at least 13 satellite channels such as CNBC-TV18, AXN, NDTV India, 24x7, Sony Entertainment Television, Zee and Discovery.

"We have entered into exclusive agreements with some of the leading channels that provide us with the feed that's offered to customers with just a five minute delay," informs Sandip Das, executive director at Hutchison-Essar.

Bharti Televentures, meanwhile, also claims to have launched a live video streaming service for its Airtel subscribers. "We have done two tie ups "� one with CNBC TV18 and the other with Aaj Tak," says Mohit Bhatnagar, vice president, new product development, at Bharti Televentures.

The new service offered by the two cellular operators marks the arrival of TV clips on mobile phones in India. However, currently, the service is available only on Edge-(Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution) enabled handsets.

Bharti's Bhatnagar claims that live streaming requires speeds of 50 kbps per second, which is available on Edge-enabled phones.

But it is also looking at a compression technology which will make streaming possible even on general radio packet switching (GPRS) phones with a video screening browser. "We are talking to some Finnish companies which have the technology to do this," says Bhatnagar.

Das, on the other hand, says that Hutch TV is not providing live streaming as of now, owing to space constraints. Streaming, or providing television programmes on mobile phones, is dependent on the bandwidth.

Usually, telecom operators dedicate one channel out of four for data. On a GPRS phone a single channel offers you speeds of 6 to 9 kbps while on an Edge phone it gives you 30 kbps.

"Video streaming needs a range of 70-80 kbps. So if I want to provide consistent quality in the streaming service, I would need 100 kbps "� which means two channels," points out Das.

He says that since Edge has rolled out its service nationally, it is not possible to earmark two channels for video streaming across the country.

"In places such as Nariman Point in Mumbai, the voice loads are very high," he adds. The company would be happy to offer streaming if the feed could be compressed within the same bandwidth, says Das.

Needless to say, Hutch TV has launched only the clipping service which subscribers can download.

"The whole idea is to offer the customer a place where he can see and download what he may have missed on TV "� Sachin Tendulkar's century, for instance. Unlike an "action replay" which may also appear at fixed hours on TV, he can see the video clips any time and store them as well," says Das.

Currently, the live streaming service for Airtel subscribers using Edge phones comes free. (Airtel users in Delhi complain that TV on mobile seems to have been rolled out only in select locations and is not widely available).

The Hutchison TV subscription, meanwhile, is a nominal Rs 99 a month for unlimited downloads. "We are seeding the market for the next six to seven months and will see the response," says Das. Like Hutchison, the Airtel service will not remain free forever.

"We are looking at two revenue models where customers can either pay according to data download or pay per channel per month," says Bhatnagar.

Cellular industry observers says that telecom service companies will go all out to promote the service for two reasons. "One, it acts as a visible differentiator, considering that there is little difference in terms of price points and quality of network," says Raj Singh, director of mobile marketing company Active Media.

Two, the operators also need to boost their bottomlines. The average revenue per user (ARPU) for cellular operators is declining as call rates become cheaper. And though new mobile phone users are being added every day, they are said to be low-usage customers.

TV channels are, meanwhile, looking at it as more of an experiment. Says CNBC-TV 18 CEO Haresh Chawla: "It's a new idea and a new mode of delivery for our channel. It's just an experiment and we will wait for the response." CNBC has agreed to give its feed to both Airtel and Hutchison subscribers.

TV Today's senior manager Rajesh Seshadri also admits that it is just another method to promote the Aaj Tak brand. However, eventually he expects the service to make money for the company.

"Ideally, broadcasters should get the larger part of the revenue generated from downloads. That's how it works in the developed markets." In India, initially, the telecom operators are expected to share 25 to 33 per cent of the revenue from TV-on-mobile services.

But TV-on-mobile may face several challenges. For starters, the market size may be negligible. "The population of Edge-enabled handsets is minuscule and barely two or three Edge phone models are available in the market.

Besides, priced upwards of Rs 15,000, they do not come cheap," says Singh. The second issue is whether the consumer will eventually pay for the service "� for watching TV on a tiny screen.

Critics notwithstanding, operators are upbeat about the future of TV-on-mobile. They expect Edge phones to hit the country soon. "We expect at least 10 per cent of all the new phones in the country in the next 12 months to be Edge-enabled. So there will be a large explosion of these services.," says Bhatnagar.

Das is more optimistic and believes that nearly 30 per cent of all the new phones in the market will be Edge enabled.

Besides, if the new compression technology becomes a reality, subscriber numbers will jump, they feel.

Das feels that the new PDA phones with large screens will also help push such services. "Today there are one million GPRS phones in the market. The penetration of customers who actually have taken a GPRS service is 30 per cent of 40 per cent. We expect 50 to 60 per cent of the GPRS users to become Edge users," he says.

What also gives them hope is the experience with other content services. Bharti launched Airtel Alive which allows you to download clips of music videos and songs.

"We already have over 10,000 downloads a day and it has increased by 400 per cent," says Bhatnagar. It has also managed to get 100,000 downloads of a game that costs Rs 150. Hutch TV, too, is happy with the response in the first few weeks. "We also got over 5,000 downloads, a day," says Das.

If content will be key, then with the rights for the 2007 world cup cricket in its bag, Hutch can look forward to a good inning in its TV-on-mobile business.