Alcatel and T-Mobile to Roll Out Interactive Mobile TV in Europe

T-Mobile International, has selected Alcatel to provide its affiliated companies in Germany, the UK and Austria with a fully integrated interactive mobile TV solution. Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or employees.

 

This solution will enable T-Mobile's innovative "TV in Your Pocket" service, allowing the operator to enhance its subscribers' experience with interactive and personalized mobile TV programs.

 

Leveraging superior encoding and streaming technologies, Alcatel's interactive mobile TV solution offers EDGE and 3G users a best-in-class mobile TV experience. This is due to rich-media player and electronic program guide (EPG) features, smart navigation and fast channel zapping. Moreover it has video and audio quality optimized for mobile handsets.

According to State of Interactive TV 2005 report from Kagan Research currently, 34.1 million households subscribe to ITV service and the number of subscribers is expected to reach 69 million by 2009, more than half of U.S. TV households.

Revenues for electronic transactions for games, television or t-commerce (television commerce), and interactive advertising are estimated to reach $2.4 million by 2009. Kagan Research estimates the interactive services segment will generate $780 million in operator revenue in that same period for cable; digital broadcast satellites (DBS), and telcos.

 

Alcatel will provide T-Mobile International with an end-to-end integrated solution, including comprehensive customer care facilities and full flexibility in implementation of tariff schemes. Moreover, based on a joint T-Mobile and Alcatel Content Governance Model, T-Mobile has granted Alcatel responsibility for aggregating live TV content, as well as "made for mobile" channels. In the first phase of the project, Alcatel will also host and technically operate the complete service platform for all three countries from its centre in Stuttgart, Germany.

 

T-Mobile focuses on the dynamic markets in Europe and the United States. By the end of June 2005, approx. 80 million customers were served in the nine T-Mobile markets, all using a unified technical platform

 

With sales of EURO 13.1 billion and 58,000 employees in 2005, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries.