Verizon's New Mobile TV Service Announced At CES

At a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Sunday, Verizon (VZ) launched VCast Mobile TV, a service using Qualcomm’s (QCOM) MediaFlo service to allow consumers to watch live television on mobile phones. They expect to launch in most major markets before the end of the first quarter. No pricing was announced. Content partners will include MTV Networks, which includes Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, as well as NBC, CBS and Fox. The service will launch with two mobile devices, one each from Samsung and LG. The say it is the first example of live streaming video over a cell phone, with high quality comparable to home viewing and almost instant channel changing.

They did say they would make the service “affordable.”

For the record, they did their press conference away from the show site, in the Palms Hotel off the Strip.

ADDENDUM: Verizon also talked about the second generation of its FiOS TV service. Among the items mention: a new media guide, with better navigation tools, and a search function that will search programs, on demand content and DVR content in one search. They will add interactive games; the service already can access digital photos and music. Eventually, over the next year, they will add video and music services from the Internet, as well as multi-player games running on PCs. They mentioned Revver as a contributor of Internet video content - but specifically did not mention YouTube, with which they have not yet reached an agreement. They will also make it possible to program DVRs via the Web or Verizon cell phones. They also plan to add interactive shopping.

The company has previously said it expected to hit 175,000 FiOS customers in 2006; executives say they remain comfortable with that estimate; the actual number will be announced along with fourth quarter earnings later this month.

Advertising on Vcast Mobile TV service will be slow at first; in some cases will be the same ones on broadcast; will be a lot like cable TV ad model, they say.

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I got a few additional details on the Verizon (VZ) cell phone television service this afternoon from Qualcomm (QCOM) CEO Paul Jacobs, who attended the Verizon press event. The television service will be provided to Verizon through Qualcomm’s MediaFLO service.

Jacobs says there will be 20-24 channels. Qualcomm has also been trialing the service with Spring, he says. If both carriers were offering the service, they would get the same channels; and the content agreements with the networks are actually with Qualcomm, not with Verizon. Jacobs did say that down the road the carriers could actually offer a blended service, with some content over MediaFLO and additional content from the carriers over the regular cellular network.

Jacobs contends the primary alternative technology, DVBH, which is produced by a European consortium lead by Nokia (NOK), has half the capacity of MediaFLO.

Jacobs also notes that the high powered nature of the service means he can cover a large city with just a few towers - in the case of Las Vegas, just three towers.