Last Saturday night, eight of us huddled together in the cramped salone of a friend’s sea cottage just south of Rome and shouted encouragement, in English and Italian, at a 13-inch television. It was Italy vs USA. Four of us were cheering on the Yanks, the other half backed the Azzurri, while little Davide, 3, just wanted his gelato. The TV reception was a bit fuzzy and the colours a bit grey, and you had to get your nose close to the screen at times to see whether it was a genuine foul or dive that sent an Italian player flopping to the pitch in apparent agony. But it was good enough for us – we could watch the match live, which is a luxury this year in Italy.
Only one World Cup match per day is broadcast free-to-air. The rest are on Sky Sports, whose parent company, News Corp, is also the ultimate owner of Times Online. Because no bars in my neighbourhood have Sky I have missed most of the matches. The single match I do get to see each night in my Rome apartment is a brutto viewing experience. On RAI 1, the signal is so weak that I get a double image, the fainter one swimming left to right under the action on the pitch. Imagine Italian variety shows and cop dramas rolling ticker-style across the screen to do battle with footballers. It’s a mismatch. Sadly, not even the World Cup can defeat the Italian singalong variety show.
This week, I went to an unlikely source to feed my World Cup withdrawal: 3 Italia. The 3G mobile phone operator scored a unique broadcasting deal with Sky Sports, obtaining the rights to broadcast all 64 World Cup matches live to its Italian customers. It is live football in your hand, as the advert says.
Before meeting with 3 Italia, I phoned a few tech analysts and fellow journalists (mainly in Germany, where T-Mobile is operating a similar trial service) for a preview of what to expect. Though none of them had actually seen a mobile TV broadcast, they were all dismissive of the concept of beaming matches to a handset, repeating the most common criticism: the coverage is spotty and the picture quality unreliable. Who would want to watch a match on a two-inch screen?
And so, with low expectations, I met with a 3 Italia official, Max, to watch Germany play Ecuador. The picture was sharp, the action flowed without a hitch, the sound quality was as good as could be expected, even in a noisy environment. I was impressed. It was vastly superior to live internet streaming. There were no buffering hiccups nor frozen images. It was, in short, a TV broadcast in your hand with a digital-quality image. In fact, the clarity of the picture was so good that it was no difficulty at all to watch a tiny ball kicked around the pitch, though I did find myself tilting the phone towards the German goal from time to time, trying to give the outmanned Ecuadorians some much-needed momentum.
Unlike the brief, web-streamed highlights packages available from mobile networks in the UK, 3 Italia uses DVB-H broadcast technology, which is likely to become the standard across Europe. It’s a broad frequency band, with capacity for 40 channels of live programming.
According to analysts, you have to be within three to five kilometres of a transmitter to get a clear, uninterrupted signal, which can be a problem in some Italian cities. 3 Italia, which purchased the TV broadcaster, Channel 7, last year for €220 million (£150 million), is using the broadcaster's infrastructure – a network of TV signal transmitters that covers more than 65 per cent of the country – to broadcast the signal to compatible Samsung and LG Electronics handsets.
While the signal is strong in wide open spaces, the dense cluster of buildings in an urban centre can prove problematic. As Vincenzo Novari, 3 Italia’s chief executive, told me, "If you are on a roof in Rome, you’ll get the signal perfectly". The further you advance into the city centre, the less reliable the coverage. "Rome is one of the toughest cities," he said. The monstrous ancient city walls block some of the signal and erecting booster signals in town requires clearance from pesky city officials. "But in Florence, Milan, Turin, the signal is very good," he said. And it must be said that during my three-hour trial with the phone in the southeast of Rome – a tricky topographic region of hills and tall buildings – the reception was crystal clear and constant.
The service launched on June 1 throughout Italy and is free to customers who sign up for a €49-per-month (£33.50-per-month) service plan or on a pay-as-you-go basis for other customers. The company is not yet releasing figures on take-up, but Mr Novari told reporters earlier this year that the service "will be a big success if we get more than half a million customers this year." Of those who have signed up to the service so far, 70 per cent are first-time 3 Italia customers, Mr Novari said.
The demographic is predictable: primarily men, aged 25 to 54. They are watching about one hour of programming per day, which is interesting as it suggests that early users prefer standard TV-length programming formats, rather than quick three-minute news and entertainment clips, and that could attract advertisers. Sure enough, the likes of Nike, Mercedes, MasterCard and Puma have all begun advertising on Walk TV.
Mr Novari believes that the market for mobile TV is ripe for take-off, with sports programming luring in the early adopters. By the 2010 World Cup, he predicts, Italy’s mobile TV services could have ten million subscribers. There’s already plenty of competition, with Telecom Italia Mobile and Vodafone Italia due to unveil rival services in time for the Serie A football season in September.
For the early operators, the big challenge is getting a clear signal to Europe’s city centres and the desks, bus stops and parks within them. The roll-out of coverage is expanding surprisingly rapidly, a fact I greet with mixed emotions. I’m happy to sneak a peek at the football when I’m away from home. The variety shows I could do without.
Bernhard Warner is a former Reuters internet correspondent in Europe and senior editor for The Industry Standard Europe. He writes about technology, the internet and media industries and can be reached at techscribe@gmail.com
