Vacationers in China's sunny Hainan province will soon have more opportunity to take their multimedia with them to the beach, thanks to an agreement inked between UTStarcom and Hainan Telecom.
This first large-scale mobile TV system in China will adopt UTStarcom's end-to-end RollingStream platform. The deployment is scheduled to go live on May 17, 2009, as an extension of the existing IPTV service that Hainan Telecom and UTStarcom have been delivering since 2006. UTStarcom reports it is the only technology supplier for this project.
"UTStarcom has long been a leading innovator in Asia's multimedia communications landscape, especially in the IPTV market. We were the first to deploy a digital signage solution using an IPTV platform and were the first to deliver the Olympic Games via IPTV to China viewers," stated Robert Wu, CEO of UTStarcom China. "Our RollingStream IPTV platform was created to support a more extensive three-screen video delivery strategy beyond just the television. Mobile TV is the next natural progression in the execution of our long-term video plans."
The system will support unicast, wireless application protocol and two modes of access through the mobile phone WAP browser and mobile phone end-user applications. Rich media services will enable all live television broadcast channels to be accessed via time-shift capabilities for up to 72 hours after the original airing. The system also will support online viewing and download, on-demand video and music, billboards, search capabilities and video blogs.
UTStarcom will continue to provide Hainan Telecom with full-system engineering for both the IPTV and mobile TV services to ensure a consistent user experience across all video channels and to maximize video quality in accordance with current bandwidth capabilities.