Nokia Networks trials LTE for TV
News

Nokia Networks trials LTE for TV

Finnish vendor Nokia Networks is trialling LTE Broadcast technology in its latest bid to open up new revenue sources for operators.

The company is developing the technology – designed to enable LTE for TV broadcasting – in partnership with a number of broadcasting firms across Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and will hold what it claims to be the world’s first field trial of TV broadcasting using a single LTE frequency.

Hossein Moiin, CTO at Nokia Networks, said that existing technology means that when watching videos over a mobile network, the content is individually streamed to each user.

“With LTE Broadcast, the same signal is received by many users at the same time, resulting in more efficient capacity and spectrum use,” Moiin said. “Spectrum doesn’t need to be dedicated to either broadcast or broadband, but can be used flexibly for both, according to users’ needs.”

In a single frequency network (SFN) all base stations use the same frequency to deliver TV content, which maximises the number of channels available for broadcast.

Operators are expected to benefit from new revenue streams, as they are able to distribute TV over their existing mobile broadband infrastructure.

“We believe that LTE Broadcast is a technology well suited to distribute TV and broadcast services and will help us expand the benefits of mobile internet to everyone, while evolving the TV viewing experience,” Moiin added.

The trial began transmissions earlier this month in four sites across Munich, Germany.

Gift this article