Good news for UK telly addicts: BBC One, ITV1 and E4 programmes will be broadcast to mobile TV phones by BT's new BT Movio service, and all for just £5 a month.

The service will be broadcast via the DAB digital radio network, which, unlike similar 3G mobile TV services, is a broadcast technology, meaning there's no limit to the number of devices accessing the TV programmes. DAB operates in a similar way to your TV signal in that it's broadcast via a transmitter, and thus doesn't use any of the mobile network's precious bandwidth.

In contrast, 3G is limited by the available bandwdith, as it requires streaming the video as data over the existing 3G network.


The new service will be launched initially on the new Virgin Mobile Lobster 700TV phone. If you have a contract worth £25 or more, you can get the phone and the mobile TV service for free.

Otherwise, on pay as you go, it'll cost you £200 for the phone, and £5 a month for the TV programmes. The mobile TV package will also be offered by other phone operators in the near future.

We featured news of this new service, and Virgin Mobile's Lobster 700TV phone, back in February, and it's good that Virgin and BT's plans are still on track and their service will be with us very soon. Mobile TV, it seems, is finally here, and with 2007 set to be the year of the mobile TV handsets, including new rumoured Sony Ericsson WEGA mobile TV phones, our phones may never look the same again.

[Source: BBC News]