DoCoMo to Offer Video Streaming over its 3G Network

Japan's DoCoMo is to launch a one-to-many video streaming trial service on its 3G network, called V-Live. The service will stream both live and archived video content to FOMA phones and PDAs connected to PHS phones. Last September, a DoCoMo-led consortium began testing the platform, developing service applications and studying the marketability of the service. With the trial service, both open and closed content will be offered.

Open content will be accessible from May 15, 2002, on the official V-Live content menu and available to all V-Live subscribers. Content will include music, sports highlights, news, animation, tourist information and more. Closed content will be available exclusively to the customers of content providers or members of corporate users. Examples of this content include English conversation lessons, internal information for employees, security services (observation from a remote location) and investor relations tools.

The V-Live platform enables video and data content to be transferred in the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) and converted into the 3G-324M format for compliance with FOMA video-enabled phones. The platform employs the MPEG4 (Moving Picture Experts Group-4) standard for data encoding and the AMR standard for voice encoding, so providers can offer content both to FOMA phones and various types of PDAs connected to PHS phones.

DoCoMo also said that it will begin licensing patents for its proprietary W-CDMA technology, on which it's FOMA service is based. Presumably that move is to enable dual mode handsets to be developed that will work on both its network and the WCDMA networks being built in other countries, which are slightly incompatible. Considering that J-Phone announced yesterday plans to delay its 3G launch in order to ensure international roaming compatibilty, the move seems like a knee-jerk reaction by DoCoMo to protect its own potential roaming revenues.'"

Posted to the site on 25th April 2002