Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) and SFR announced today their collaboration in the field of mobile broadcasting in France. The objective of the joint effort is to validate business prospects for mobile TV broadcasting and evaluate the technical performance of Alcatel’s “Unlimited Mobile TV”, a hybrid satellite and terrestrial solution in the S-Band. This solution has received the support from the French Industrial Innovation Agency.
Alcatel and SFR are working together on different growth scenarios for the mobile TV market in France, as well as on a variety of marketing approaches to match different usage profiles and consumption models. Initial joint analyses of the potential revenues and cost of this innovative service in France tends to confirm interest in this new market. The usage patterns studied will be used to meet the needs of mobile TV users, whether in transit (with individual or public modes of transport), or nomadic (static) either outdoors or indoors (at home, at the office, or in public places such as shopping malls).
In addition, for the past few months the two companies have been conducting a technical evaluation of Alcatel’s proposed system. Alcatel and SFR have exchanged comparative deployment cost information for the different mobile broadcasting solutions. Alcatel provided SFR with information regarding configuration, as well as the number of sites needed to deploy such an S-band network, and the two companies have jointly validated certain technical and cost hypotheses associated with this deployment.
As stated by Jean-Dominique Pit, SFR Director of Strategy and Innovation, “SFR is convinced that mobile TV will be among the important services offered to its customers and wishes to provide them with an excellent technical solution combining a wealth of content with high quality coverage. This is why we are going to pursue joint efforts with Alcatel.” He added that “The 2006 FIFA World Cup showed a very strong attraction of worldwide customers for mobile TV services that are easily accessible, anywhere and any time. In France, SFR customers downloaded 1.4 million videos between June 9 and July 9, and subscribed to 140,000 goal alerts, 73% of those involving the French team. It is clear that future major international sporting events will help mobile TV come into widespread use, which will require effective broadcasting solutions, truly accessible everywhere and to everybody at the same time.”
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