DoCoMo to trial live 3G streaming TV

[Steve Bildermann]

Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo said Tuesday that it will conduct field trials of streaming television over its 3G service.

The Japanese wireless carrier said it will conduct the trials between June 15 and November 30 and is seeking 3,000 testers The testers must be existing customers of DoCoMo's FOMA 3G service. The carrier said it will be working with SKY PerfectTV!, a Japanese television provider to provide the service, which will stream both live programming from SKY PerfectTV! and archived video.

DoCoMo said in a statement that it intended to commercialize the service by next spring if the field trials provided satisfactory results.

http://www.commsdesign.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=20300663

All about FOMA

[Video-Link Japan]

I notice in this press release:
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=7278

"People who wish to serve as monitors must own a DoCoMo FOMA 900i series handset with subscription to the i-mode and M-stage V-Live services, as well as a subscription to SKY PerfecTV!. 3,000 users will be selected to monitor the program-related service including the 300 users chosen to also monitor the video-clip streaming service.

Those acting as monitors will be asked to provide feedback during the trial. While they will be billed for communication charges, the basic fees for both services will be waived."

Ouch.. only 300 get to test the video streaming service and they will have to pay for the packet data transfer fees..

[mr. sparkle]

Sprint is finally getting their act together with their new PCS Vision service here in the US.

video mail clips up to :15
wireless web (limited)
over the air TV
SMS text messaging
MMS picture + audio messaging
games
ringtones
screen savers
business services-email, calendar, directory

So which is the best phone of these?
VM4050 by Toshiba
VM4500 by Sanyo
VM-A680 by Samsung

Cool that we can start makin' some instant video
in the US now.

I'm jealous of all you keitei video types!