[BC] Mobile streaming - who needs IBOC?

[Mark Humphrey]

On 6/27/06, R J Carpenter <rcarpen at erols.com> wrote:
> The problem I see is that all the present mobile phone protocols
> involve "connections"   Part of the reliability is doubtless due toi
> repeating damaged packets.
>
> I contend that a connectionless protocol will be needed in order to
> handle many thousands of simultaneous broadcast users.  It will have
> to have very strong forward error correction like the satcasters'.

>From what I've read, this is precisely what Qualcomm intends to do
with the "MediaFLO" system.  It uses TV Channel 55 (with OFDM) to push
high-bandwidth audio and video streams out to mobile devices, thus
taking load off the local cell sites.  Qualcomm will lease this
service out to mobile phone carriers (Verizon has already signed a
deal) so the user probably won't realize the signal is actually coming
from a central transmitter.

The tech briefs on their website explain how it will work:

http://www.qualcomm.com/mediaflo/index.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaFLO

Mark