Browsers to support terrestrial TV

JAPANESE BROWSER SPECIALIST, Access, reckons that mobile phones capable of combining 'pushed' content with broadcast TV pictures will be generally available before Q1 2006.

So, in effect, TV and the Internet will be combined on your mobile phone. Obviously, there are plenty of ways of achieving this combination today, but they are all connexion hungry. If the mobile phone receives pictures via broadcast instead, it doesn't waste valuable network bandwidth.

But if you added in pushed content and associated Web links to the TV signal, the mobile network operators still have the opportunity to make money by supporting broadcast TV.

There's already an Open standard for such services in Europe in the shape of DVB-H but Japan appears ahead of the game. It's developed its own standard, ARIB's STD-B24, which will enable Japanese operators to get up and running during 2005.

The fly in the ointment is that broadcasters need to optimise their content for these new mobile formats. Thus it best suits markets where there is plenty of digital TV already such as Britain.

So will programmes such as Two Pints of Lager and Little Britain be the first to appear on your mobile phone then? µ