Calling from Tokyo – while watching TV

Have you heard about Tokyo’s Digital TV broadcasts for specially equipped mobile phones?

It’s been announced a while back but now, appropriately geared cellular phones which are equipped with special receivers have begun in Japan’s bustling urban areas on April 1st, 2006, following nearly a full year of test broadcasts.

As exepected, these new phones were quite hard to find in stores as eager consumers have already snapped up the limited number of handsets on the market. Japan’s major mobile carriers candidly admit sales are good, but haven’t disclosed any specific numbers.

Japanese mobile TV service is not a world first. South Korea, Britain and several other nations offer a similar service based on different technologies. Mobile users in some parts of the United States can also tap into digital broadcasts.

But the new service in Japan, which is free, will potentially reach the broadest market yet through the country’s terrestrial digital broadcast system, which relays images through the air via TV towers, not satellites. It makes a lot more sense that way considering the large number of potential viewers.

It also uses broadcasting air waves, rather than an internet connection, to relay streaming video. That way, everybody sees the same thing at the exact same time.

Japan’s 90 million mobile phone users already play video games, download music files, exchange e-mail, read news, trade stocks, store digital photos and surf the web on their tiny handset screens which are sometimes only half the size of a business card.

On a lighter note, it’s not clear yet if the broadcasted programs are any good, though.

Masao Nakamura, the CEO of Japan’s top mobile operator NTT DoCoMo tells the BBC, “In the short-term, digital terrestrial broadcasting on mobiles with the same programming as normal televisions will be of little interest for us”.

Nakamura adds, “But we are getting ready by preparing new specific content for the service that could come into use later when new channels are available”.

Perhaps this means there will -eventually- be a 24/7 English-only TV channel for tourists visiting Tokyo… that would be a big hit!

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