MediaFLO was a technology developed by

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, ...

for transmitting audio, video and data to portable devices such as

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

s and personal televisions, used for

mobile television Mobile television is television watched on a small handheld or mobile device. It includes service delivered via mobile phone networks, received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations, or via satellite broadcast. Regular broadcast stan ...

. In the United States, the service powered by this technology was branded as FLO TV.

Broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began wi ...

data transmitted via MediaFLO includes live, real time audio and video streams, as well as scheduled video and audio clips and shows. The technology could also carry

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...

datacast Datacasting (data broadcasting) is the broadcasting of data over a wide area via radio waves. It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations along with digital terrestrial television (DTT), but may also be applied ...

application data, such as

stock market A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, ...

quotes, sports scores, and weather reports. In October 2010,

announced it was suspending new sales of the service to consumers. In December 2010,

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...

announced that it will purchase Qualcomm's FCC licenses in the 700 MHz band. FLO TV discontinued service on March 27, 2011.

Overview

The "FLO" in MediaFLO stood for ''Forward Link Only'', meaning that the data transmission path is one way, from the tower to the device. The MediaFLO system transmitted data on a frequency separate from the frequencies used by current mobile telephone networks. In the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, the MediaFLO system used frequency spectrum 716-722 MHz, which had previously been allocated to

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

TV channel A television channel is a terrestrial frequency or virtual number over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the terrestrial or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with ...

55.01Nov2004 Qualcomm press release regarding 700 MHz spectrum usage for MediaFLO Dailywireless.org- http://www.dailywireless.org/2007/01/07/verizon-launching-mediaflo/ FLO was standardized within

ETSI The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standard ...

as TS 102 589,ETSI TS 102 589 "Forward Link Only Air Interface; Specification for Terrestrial Mobile; Multimedia Multicast," V1.1.1 (2009-02) http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102500_102599/102589/01.01.01_60/ts_102589v010101p.pdf and has components standardized within the

Telecommunications Industry Association The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to develop voluntary, consensus-based industry standards for a wide variety of Information and Communication Technologies ( ICT) ...

(TIA 1099, 1102, 1103, 1104, 1120, 1130, 1132, 1146 and 1178.) MediaFLO was a competitor to the Korean T-DMB, the Japanese

1seg is a mobile terrestrial digital audio/video and data broadcasting service in Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru and the Philippines. Service began experimentally during 2005 and commercially on April 1, 2006. It is designe ...

and the European

DVB-H DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) is one of three prevalent mobile TV formats. It is a technical specification for bringing broadcast services to mobile handsets. DVB-H was formally adopted as ETSI standard EN 302 304 in November 2 ...

standards. Qualcomm conducted MediaFLO technical trials internationally, with the intention of forming partnerships with existing multi-channel content providers and service operators, but has since discontinued development.

Technology

The protocol was developed because of the inherent spectral inefficiency of

unicast Unicast is data transmission from a single sender (red) to a single receiver (green). Other devices on the network (yellow) do not participate in the communication. In computer networking, unicast is a one-to-one transmission from one point in ...

ing high-rate full-motion

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...

to multiple subscribers. Additionally, traditional

analog television Analog television is the original television technology that uses analog signals to transmit video and audio. In an analog television broadcast, the brightness, colors and sound are represented by amplitude, phase and frequency of an analog ...

and over-the-air

terrestrial digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...

signals (

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Feb ...

) were difficult to implement on mobile devices, due mostly to issues of

power consumption Electric energy consumption is the form of energy consumption that uses electrical energy. Electric energy consumption is the actual energy demand made on existing electricity supply for transportation, residential, industrial, commercial, and ot ...

ATSC Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an American set of standards for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like th ...

, used only by the

and its neighbors, also has difficulty even with fixed reception due to multipath, and mobile ATSC-M/H (which is

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...

from individual

TV station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the eart ...

s) was not finalized until 2008. In addition, the transmission need not convey as high a resolution as would be needed for a larger display. MediaFLO streams are only 200-250 kbit/s, which would be insufficient for a larger screen size. In the now defunct United States implementation, FLO was transmitted by a network of high-power broadcast

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the ...

s operating at

effective radiated power Effective radiated power (ERP), synonymous with equivalent radiated power, is an IEEE standardized definition of directional radio frequency (RF) power, such as that emitted by a radio transmitter. It is the total power in watts that would h ...

s as high as 50 kilowatts. This allowed for a coverage area of a transmitter to be as large as .IEEE Transactions On Broadcasting, Vol. 53, No. 1, March 2007, http://www.qualcomm.com/common/documents/articles/FLO_physical_layer_IEEE.pdf The activation of many of these transmitters were delayed due to the official end of analog TV broadcasting on channel 55 being delayed. Immediately following the transition, the FLO network was expanded to several new markets, and coverage was enhanced in some existing ones. The transmission was an encrypted

OFDM In telecommunications, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a type of digital transmission and a method of encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies. OFDM has developed into a popular scheme for wideband digital commu ...

set of

QAM Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is the name of a family of digital modulation methods and a related family of analog modulation methods widely used in modern telecommunications to transmit information. It conveys two analog message signa ...

signals sent on a 5.55 MHz channel from 716-722 MHz (former UHF TV channel 55). The

band Band or BAND may refer to: Places *Bánd, a village in Hungary *Band, Iran, a village in Urmia County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Band, Mureș, a commune in Romania *Band-e Majid Khan, a village in Bukan County, West Azerbaijan Province, I ...

was

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition e ...

ed-off by the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

(FCC) and known as the "Lower 700 MHz Block D". Qualcomm also bought, in a later auction, the use of former analog UHF TV channel 56 (722-728 MHz) in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco for additional services. However, this is owned by Manifest Wireless (a subsidiary of

Dish Network DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling ...

's Frontier Wireless) in most other

media market A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...

s, where ATSC-M/H signals were on air. All of the transmitters sent the same signal and used the same frequency, forming a single-frequency network. This allowed the mobile to decode the signal from more than one transmitter in the same way that it might if it was a multipath-delayed version from the same transmitter. All stations used

callsign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assi ...

WPZA237, but each has an identifier indicating its group and number. For example, one station in the

metro Atlanta Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Alpharetta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and th ...

was ATL-006, while another was ATL-014. Some other operational parameters of MediaFLO are as follows: All of the bearer (data) traffic occurred within an MLC using the 3500 non-overhead subcarriers. The protocol also contemplates a certain amount of inter-symbol time spacing, to allow for the effects of multi-path transmission and reception. There is a window time T_WGI included both before and after each OFDM symbol. However, since this window is shared between each two consecutive symbols, T_S = T_U + T_WGI + T_FGI.

Commercial roll-out

USA: FLO TV

In the U.S., all FLO television providers offered a set of 14 basic channels: * 2.FLO (6 am to 10 pm) — Original made-for-mobile reports and concerts; added in early 2010 *

Adult Swim Adult Swim (AS; stylized as dult swim'' and often abbreviated as s'') is an American adult-oriented night-time cable television channel that shares channel space with the basic cable network Cartoon Network and is programmed by its in-house ...

(10 pm to 6 am) * ABC Mobile *

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

Mobile — Containing a mixture of sports and other CBS content *

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk s ...

* Comedy Central *

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

Mobile TV — Frequently simulcasting live sporting events from their family of networks * Fox Mobile *

Fox News Channel The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is ...

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

Mobile *

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

2Go — A mix of MSNBC, NBC, CNBC, and Bravo networks *

Disney Channel Disney Channel, sometimes known as simply Disney, is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Comp ...

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...

Adult Swim

time-share A timeshare (sometimes called vacation ownership) is a property with a divided form of ownership or use rights. These properties are typically resort condominium units, in which multiple parties hold rights to use the property, and each owner ...

s with 2.FLO, as it does on

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

with

Cartoon Network Cartoon Network (often abbreviated as CN) is an American cable television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is a part of The Cartoon Network, Inc., a division that also has the broadcasting and production activities of Boomerang, ...

. Additionally, the "FLO Preview Channel" was a

free-to-view Free-to-view (FTV) is a term used for audiovisual transmissions that are provided free without any form of continual subscription . It differs from free-to-air (FTA) in that the program is encrypted. Free-to-view vs. free-to-air The free-to-vi ...

barker channel A barker channel is a form of digital signage, operating in the form of a television channel that is entirely composed of sales promotion and advertising, usually marketing various features of the service carrying the channel. The name is derived ...

, available without subscription. For

conditional access Conditional access (CA) is a term commonly used in relation to software and to digital television systems. Conditional access is that ‘just-in-time’ evaluation to ensure the person who is seeking access to content is authorized to access the c ...

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

utilized its

EVDO Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO, EVDO, etc.) is a telecommunications standard for the wireless transmission of data through radio signals, typically for broadband Internet access. EV-DO is an evolution of the CDMA2000 ( IS-2000) standard whic ...

network to authenticate mobile handsets and provide the decryption keys necessary to decode the programming. Because of this, users who block data use to prevent unauthorized charge were also blocked from viewing any channels, including the preview channel. There were 16 TV channels broadcast for Verizon.MediaFLO USA – On Air Now
The additional Verizon channels include: *

MTV Tr3́s MTV Tres (taken from the Spanish word for the number three ''tres'', stylized as tr3s, with an acute accent over the '3') is an American owned by Paramount Media Networks, a subsidiary of Paramount Global. The channel is targeted toward bilingu ...

* TLC There were 16 TV channels broadcast for AT&T:AT&T Mobile TVThe additional AT&T channels are: * CNN Live Mobile* *

Crackle Crackle or crackling may refer to: Foods * Cracklings, the tissue remaining after lard and tallow have been extracted from animal fats ** Pork rinds in American English, pork scratchings in British English when served in small pieces as a snac ...

— showing a variety of movies* The standalone FLO TV Personal Television and FLO TV Automotive products also included CNN Live Mobile and Crackle.

Trials

Some trials were underway in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, with no commitment for a commercial phase. In France, Qualcomm tried unsuccessfully to convince TDF to choose MediaFLO technology. In the UK,

British Sky Broadcasting Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

conducted trials of MediaFLO in 2006.

Devices

Devices featuring MediaFLO were introduced by LG and

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

at CES 2006 in Las Vegas. On December 1, 2005

and

announced a partnership for the launch of the MediaFLO network. Verizon launched the service commercially as part of its VCAST offering on March 1, 2007, marketing the MediaFLO-specific technology/service as "VCAST TV". A similar announcement was made by

AT&T Mobility AT&T Mobility LLC, also known as AT&T Wireless and marketed as simply AT&T, is an American telecommunications company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T Inc. and provides wireless services in the United States. AT&T Mobility is the th ...

in February 2007. AT&T Mobility launched their MediaFLO service on May 4, 2008. The first non-phone TV-only devices were released in late 2009. FLO TV was first offered on certain wireless phones offered by Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless. In November 2009 FLO TV introduced the FLO TV Personal Television mobile device (model PTV-350).

End of service

On July 21, 2010, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said the company planned to either sell its MediaFLO business or its spectrum, or to find a partner. The company had predicted the total cost to launch the service would be $800 million, including the $683 million the ''

San Diego Union-Tribune ''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' is a metropolitan daily newspaper published in San Diego, California, that has run since 1868. Its name derives from a 1992 merger between the two major daily newspapers at the time, ''The San Diego Union'' and ...

'' says Qualcomm paid for the spectrum. At the time, the service covered as many as 68 million people, but many analysts confirmed that the project was losing money. On October 5, 2010, Qualcomm signaled the end of the FloTV service by declaring that there would be no further sales of devices to consumers. Qualcomm indicated the service would be up and running through at least Spring 2011 but could be turned off at any point thereafter. The company said that the MediaFLO spectrum could be used for electronic magazines or newspapers, though such services could be offered alongside the existing broadcast channels. Qualcomm had even reached out to software developers for possible solutions. On December 20, 2010,

announced that it would purchase Qualcomm's FCC licenses in the 700 MHz band and that FLO TV service would be shut down on March 27, 2011. Qualcomm received $1.93 billion. Despite spending $132 million in the previous quarter on bolstering FLO TV, Qualcomm still made a profit on the sale, as it had originally paid $38 million for the former channel 55 and $558 million for the former channel 56.

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

FLO TV home page

RabbitEars.Info MediaFLO Transmitter List
Mobile television Qualcomm