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Mobile & Wireless
Going with the FLO
FLO Forum Specs Boost Mobile Broadcast Interoperability Effort
by Jim Barthold
The FLO Forum, a standardization body founded around
Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile broadcast network technology,
has introduced a new specification to help vendors build out
Forward Link Only (FLO) multicast networks.
The new Multiplex Subsystem - to - Transmit Station Interface
(MTI) allows transmit stations from multiple manufacturers to
be part of a single MediaFLO broadcast network, the
organization said. On the other hand, those same transmit
stations must be compliant with the MTI protocol to correctly
broadcast a FLO waveform, raising a red flag about the open
and interoperable facets of the spec.
“Qualcomm's MediaFLO is a proprietary mobile video delivery
system … it’s a variant of IP for broadcast technology,” said
Jeff Heynen, Directing Analyst, Broadband and IPTV at Infonetics
Research.
Verizon Wireless said it would use the Qualcomm technology
with its V CAST broadcast service either later this year or early
next. Nevertheless, Heynen said he is “concerned that it is a
proprietary implementation of RTSP (Real-Time Streaming
Protocol) and whether that catches on among other service
providers is going to be hard.”
The Qualcomm MediaFLO system, he added, “is nice because
you can double or even triple the amount of channels you can
get with a traditional broadcast service and you don’t have the
bandwidth issues because of the physical multiplexing that
they’re using.”
Kamil Grajski, president of the FLO Forum and VP
of engineering at Qualcomm, defended the Forum’s
emphasis on global interoperability.
“The goal of the FLO Forum … is a very deliberate and
conscious statement that we are not intending to be or
remain in any way proprietary,” Grajski said. “While the
origins of the technology are within Qualcomm, we’re really
delivering on this to open up all the interfaces and do the
standardization. Proprietary is something we’re very sensitive
to.”
The FLO specifications, he said, “will be out there; whether
they’re adopted or not is a separate issue.”
The new MTI spec, he said, is part of an ongoing effort to
increase interoperability among the many players working
within mobile broadcast.
“Any transmitter vendor who supports this specification would
be able to place a feed from the headend system and then
broadcast that over a broadcast network,” he said. “The MTI
specification is so important because the transmitter network
infrastructure is a more capital-intensive piece of any
operator’s puzzle and you now enable this global base of
transmitter vendors to offer new products to upgrade existing
products that support FLO. It is a very important step forward
for mobile broadcast in general and for FLO technology in
particular.”
The basic elements of a FLO-based broadcast network are
content aggregation, distribution, transmission and reception
at the device – generally a mobile phone. The satellite or
other source broadcast content is received at the headend
then multiplexed and delivered over-the-air.
“The MTI is the wrapper around all of that that then goes to
the transmitter equipment,” said Grajski.
Heynen questioned whether the FLO specifications will gain
traction internationally and, to an extent, whether they’d be
needed at all.
“It’s really hard to say whether the density required on a per
switching center basis that kind of multiplexing provides is
really going to be necessary within the next couple of years,”
he said. “They’re already making upgrades to UMTS and the
introduction of DVB-H will alleviate those issues. DVB-H will
work just fine. The only limitation is you’re very limited as to
the number of channels you can provide.”
In addition to the MTI specification, the Forum also
announced 16 new members, including companies like Agilent
Technologies, Chyron, Korea Electronics Technology Institute,
NDS, and Widevine were being added to its 60-member roster.
“We are looking at things globally,” said Grajski. “There
continues to be a unique set of regulatory, economic and
technology factors that cause this need to be the greatest in
the U.S., but we’re absolutely working to identify and move
forward in Europe, Japan, Korea, China, India, and elsewhere.
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