A surge in WiFi TV software is forecast

BEANCOUNTERS at Juniper Research have been counting the amount of software that can use free WiFi services.

After adding up the numbers and dividing by their shoe size, Juniper thinks that the mobile telly industry will be worth $7 billion by 2015.

According to the report, mobile TV traffic over WiFi is expected to increase by 25 times over the period 2010 through 2015 as streamed service penetration and usage levels rise. Some of this takeup will be fuelled by consumer smartphone adoption, which is also growing like topsy.

However the whole lot is under threat because greater mobile TV usage will place the mobile 3G and 3.5G networks under stress to support higher volumes of data.

This is despite the fact that WiFi provides capacity relief to mobile networks. The report opines that telcos need to deploy LTE networks as soon as possible.

However, Juniper is less hopeful about the prospects for dedicated mobile broadcast technologies such as DVB-H.

Apparently the lack of availability of handsets that are capable of receiving analogue or digital terrestrial signals, the economic downturn and changing consumer viewing habits make such networks financially infeasible. µ