I have a neat mobile TV demo on my phone. It works over standard 3G. However, many networks don’t allow video streaming from a service outside of the operator’s domain. Capacity is an issue. It doesn’t take that many concurrent video users in a 3G cell to max out the cell’s capacity. The usual story for mobile TV is start off with 3G and then migrate to a broadcast solution, like DVB-H.

However, MBMS is also a potential solution. This uses the same 3G license and technology, but allows any number of 3G phones to listen to the same channel from the base station. Therefore, a common video stream can be shared between lots of users without taking up additional channel resources from the cell. That’s the theory anyway.

I’m not sure why, but MBMS doesn’t come up that often. DVB-H is almost always the flavour of the moment for talking about broadcast mobile TV.