UK to tax TV phones

THE UK'S OFFICIAL TV licensing authority is looking to charge mobile handset owners if their phone can receive live TV broadcasts, according to The Business. As the law stands the owner of any device which is capable of receiving live transmissions will need to purchase a licence for it. At present 3G networks like 3 only transmit video clips but there are moves towards launching handsets capable of receiving (and recording) live TV.

At the recent CES show, Samsung was showing its SCH-B100 handset which is capable of receiving TV transmissions - albeit from a satellite via DMB. However, this could easily be classed as a 'live' transmission.

The SCH-B100 should be launched this month (January) in Korea - so it is a CDMA based handset. It apparently also supports video-on-demand and can playback via MPEG4. The official launch is to a be a joint effort with broadcaster, TU Media.

Samsung wasn't the first to show a DMB capable handset. LG announced such a beast back in November 2004.

The UK's mobile TV scene should hot up soon as both O2 and NTL are set to trial TV transmissions to mobile phones in 2005. The typical mobile phone TV licence dodger, however, is expected to be a young person who owns no TV set but does have a mobile phone and a broadband capable PC.

Luckily the requirement to purchase a license for a radio was dropped a while back - good news for all those mobile handset owners with built in FM radios. µ