The onset of high bandwidth mobile broadband networks such as WiMAX and LTE promise to bring to users the prospect of the ability to have true high quality, perhaps even high-definition, mobile video services. Firmly in the LTE camp is Swedish communications giant Ericsson. We find out what new innovation it has up its sleeve.

The prosperous cities of the future will be those that offer ubiquitous advanced fixed and mobile networks supporting a wide range of rich media such as mobile video and mobile TV. These will in turn emerge as a ‘constant companion' to those that want it. Furthermore, evolving communication services will reach everyone, anywhere at anytime. They will support rich one-to-many communications from time to time; rich communication and interaction at all time and all places. In short, such networks will be a true marriage of the internet and telecoms. These were among the key findings in Ericsson's Business Innovation forum in Stockholm in which the network giant aimed to outline the future that advanced networks would bring over the next five years.

Necessity of mobile broadband
At the event based in Kista, otherwise known as Scandinavia's equivalent to Silicon Valley or Silicon Fjord, the network equipment supplier said that mobile broadband would be a necessity to enable people's business and consumer needs and predicted that the development of Long Term Evolution (LTE) would be crucial to the mass availability of mobile multimedia services. LTE networks are designed to offer true mobile broadband performance thus offering the bandwidth needed to support high quality mobile video services. They will almost certainly boast data speeds that are equivalent to those offered by fixed line broadband today. The first networks are expected next year and Ericsson confirmed that it had signed licence agreements for LTE essential patents. The announcements are based on the industry practice FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) licensing. Commented Kasim Alfalahi, Vice President and Head of IPR Licensing and Patent Portfolio at Ericsson, "This is an important milestone for us to demonstrate our LTE leadership. We aim to strike a balance between providing value for our customers and earning a fair return on our significant R&D investments when other parties have the opportunity to benefit from them."

Dramatic potential
When such networks are up and running, their potential will contribute to making TV to grow dramatically in importance predicted Dr Jeffrey Cole director of the Centre for the Digital Future at USC Annenburg School. The market analyst said that future mobile TV networks would have the scope to allow TV to escape from people's living rooms for the first time, and with the availability of the appropriate handsets and mobile video players in cars he said that mobile TV would grow to be a constant companion filing holes and phases in people's lives. Addressing the subject of business models for mobile TV, Cole outlined a world where there were there were only three ways to acquire content. “You can steal; pay fees and subscribe; accept advertising for free content.”He predicted the latter would prevail in the short term and expressed confidence that end users would not be put off by having to watch advertising in order to receive content for free. This content, he added, would likely be of high enough quality that users would more likely watch mobile TV shows in 30-, 40- and even 60-minute segments rather than the two or three minute-long snippets that are mainly viewed currently. However he warned that there were limits of for just how long people would watch mobile video. "Nobody will watch Lord of The Rings for the first time on mobile devices," he chided.

Home-based content servers
Ericsson saw a world where people deployed content servers at home especially in the transport of rich media content such as video to a range of compatible mobile video platforms. It also sees the rise and rise of the app store concept within mobile video. Jan Häglund, Ericsson's deputy head of product area IP and broadband networks did however caution that there would be a need for very closely aligned service convergence and that operators have to understand fully the different character aspects of each content delivery platform. "Development needs to be adapted to the screen in front of you," Häglund said. "We've only see phase one of the digital TV evolution; constant TV everywhere is the next phase." This was summed up as an age of seamless media consumption from the anytime, anywhere, any screen. In fact both the content and screen would be of the users’ choice where they could also select camera angles, enable personalised views and have interactivity—almost certainly in HD—anywhere.

Brokerage technology
Another area touched upon by Hakan Djuphamar, and Ericsson vice president of systems architecture, was the need for service and/or content providers to be able to use brokerage technology to enable a reversed charge model for mobile video. That is to be able to push out mobile video to end users who would balk at being liable pay for streams of video that they did not ask for but which the provider would like to push out to be viewed. One such very interested provider at the event was CNN. Casey Harwood SVP of CNN parent company Turner Europe outlined what was keeping the company awake at night as it tried to predict how the industry would evolve. He predicted that fragmentation would be a key market dynamic with the provider having to develop strategies to encompass both free and on-demand content. In this brave new world, discoverability of content would be a key issue, itself provoking concerns about inventory management, delivery and aggregation. Looking forward, Harwood saw potential in what he described as ‘global achievers’. Numbering around 40 million users Harwood said that they were heavy CNN users who would respond positively to timely mobile service that could keep them better informed in areas affecting their working lives. He said, “[The] key development will be to invest in more business use devices targeting Corporate market e.g. BlackBerry [users].”

LTE-powered future
But there will be a lot more than just one device of the likes of Casey Harwood to have to support. The LTE-powered future will support billions of data-hungry Internet-connected PCs, mobile Internet devices, MIDs, TVs and other mobile devices and platforms. These will drive huge waves of traffic on mobile networks and Ericsson concluded that this was an opportunity to be addressed pro-actively and innovative business models and new technology would be required to translate this traffic to revenue opportunities. Commented Leif Björklund, head of IPTV solutions at Ericsson’s BU Multimedia, “Television has changed; the future scenarios [is based on three screens] with a single architecture supporting multiple service models.”