Virgin Mobile TV Service to Shut Down

LONDON, July 26: BT has
cancelled its spectrum agreement with GCap Media to operate BT Movio, the
mobile TV service available in the U.K. on Virgin Mobile, reportedly as a
result of slow customer demand.

The five-channel service
launched on Virgin Mobile last October with a multimillion-pound ad campaign
featuring Pamela Anderson. Customer take-up, however, has been slow, partly
because the service was only compatible with one phone model. Last week,
meanwhile, the European Commission announced its backing for the DVB-H mobile
standard, as opposed to the DMB standard used by the BT/Virgin service.

"BT is discussing the
timescale for the closure of the service with Virgin Mobile,” a spokesman is
quoted as saying in the Guardian.
“While the feedback from users on the service has been complimentary, Movio
sales have been slower than originally expected mainly due to a lack of
compatible devices from the big brands. This in turn has been caused by the
fragmented nature of the mobile TV market and hesitancy on the part of the main
network operators as they seek to fill their own largely under-utilized 3G
networks."

Commenting on the closure,
Bruce Renny, the marketing director of ROK Entertainment Group, which operates
a mobile TV service, noted: “Expectations for the commercial uptake of
full-length broadcast TV on mobiles as subscription services are
over-optimistic and the demise of Virgin's mobile TV service reflects that.
After all, why pay a subscription fee to receive the same TV content on your
mobile that you already get at home? Particularly when people don't watch TV on
mobiles for more than a few minutes at a time. To be commercially successful,
you have to provide a combination of live news, sports updates and
video-on-demand made-for-mobile content which is instantly engaging. Simply
broadcasting linear TV to mobiles is not the answer.”