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World’s first cloud-
based mobile TV at
Eurovision Song
Contest
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Ericsson, in cooperation
with the European
Broadcasting Union
(EBU) and Norwegian
Broadcasting
Corporation (NRK),
launched the world’s first
cloud based MobileTV
solution during the 2010
Eurovision Song Contest.
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Cloud-based computing optimized for mobile phones has now
been applied to MobileTV. All the computing and calculations
needed to create a good user experience now take place in the
cloud using the web browser on the phone, instead of requiring
consumers to download applications to their phones. The results
of this live experiment show that the potential for cloud-based
mobile computing is present, and that there is a growth market for
media organizations and telecom operators in which no capital
expenditure is needed.
"Previously, you would have to download an application to the
phone in order to have a good user-experience. What we have
shown now is that viewing mobile TV and video on demand can be
done in an easy and user-friendly way, by just using the browser
of the phone," says Kurt Sillén, Head of Customer Business
Development at Ericsson Business Unit Multimedia. "Using this
technology is now possible since bandwidth of mobile networks
allows for quicker transmission of information, which means we
can do necessary calculations in the cloud rather than in the
phone," Sillén says.
This new MobileTV experience was launched as an experiment
during the Semi-finals and Final of the Eurovision Song Contest in
Oslo in late May by the European Broadcasting Union.
"An important mission for us is to expand the reach for our viewers
on to digital channels," says Nicoletta Iacobacci, Head of ITV &
Crossmedia at the European Broadcasting Union. "We know that
for our digital viewers, one of the most important reasons to use
this technology is the user experience. This experiment shows that
this can be provided by 3G mobile phones much more easily than
before. We had a total of 25,000 visitors to our mobile site from 11
countries, which we consider a great success," says Iacobacci.
"Promotion was only done through the event's website
www.eurovision.tv, and Facebook."
This year, the Eurovision Song Contest took place in Oslo,
Norway, and was coproduced by the EBU and NRK.
"It was really interesting to follow the viral spread of the mobile
portal," says Andreas Munkelien, CTO of Digital Media at NRK.
"Users on blogs and twitter were impressed with the interactive
nature of the broadcast. The results were above expectations.
Many tweets and blogs online said the user experience was really
good. Users could not believe that the technology behind, for
example, sweeping, took place using the browser instead of a
downloaded application," Munkelien says.
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