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The World Championships in Athletics offered an excellent environment to demonstrate use cases for mobile TV

6-14 August 2005 Helsinki, Finland

Mobile TV broadcasts took place in August at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki, where the guests of the companies behind the Finnish Mobile TV project were able to use mobile TV for the first time at an international sporting event. YLE (The Finnish Broadcasting Company) provided mobile TV users with a multi-channel package, including a domestic broadcast of the championships, which included both YLE TV1 and YLE TV2 coverage. In addition, mobile TV users received the compilation broadcast for international distribution and five special championships broadcasts of individual events (running events, field events, race walking, and marathon). Each event could thus be followed without a break from start to finish.

Excellent Access to Mobile Content

During the championships, mobile TV users also had access to regular YLE TV1, MTV3, Nelonen, CNN, BBC World, and Eurosport programming. The real-time TV programs were watched on the Nokia 7710 smartphone equipped with a special accessory to receive mobile TV broadcasts.

The World Championships in Athletics offered an excellent environment to demonstrate use cases for mobile TV, and specifically how new content can be produced for mobile TV devices. For example, the users could watch the games on their way to the stadium or anytime they were away from the action.

Finnish Pilot Results

Digita, Elisa, MTV, Nelonen, Nokia, Sonera and YLE jointly conducted the mobile TV pilot in Finland from 8.3.2005 to 20.6.2005. The pilot, which took place in the Helsinki capital region, tested the feasibility of watching television broadcasts using a mobile device. According to the initial pilot results, mobile TV services proved popular with the participants of the pilot, as 58% said that they believe that mobile TV services will be popular. Familiar TV channels were watched also on a mobile device and the test users watched between 5 to 30 minutes of mobile TV per day. Full results of the Finnish mobile TV pilot are available on this site.

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