The importance of mobile TV is immense in the year 2008. Many operators are trying their hand at this service. In fact Ericsson said that more than 170 mobile TV offerings are launched around the world.

However initially, not a favorable response was received by the telecom operators having mobile TV services. But at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Telstra reported progress for mobile TV services delivered over its HSDPA “Next G” network and Alcatel Lucent’s mobile TV platform.

At the biggest mobile event, many vendors expressed their views regarding Mobile TV services and solutions.

A hybrid solution uniting satellite and terrestrial broadcasting of Alcatel Lucent called as DVB-SH is progressing towards a commercial launch with ICO in the US. It mainly focusses on vehicular segment. If we talk about device side, Alcatel Lucent is demonstrating only two DVB-SH devices from Sagem and Samsung.

Ericsson announced the first commercial rollouts of MBMS within one year. Nokia’s N96 is one another step in DVB-SH devices.

Apart from this, a lot of talk is going around the corner about mobile TV and convergence. Many operators have come up with solutions which blend together unicast and broadcast. Such players include Nokia Siemens network and Alcatel Lucent.

Mobile advertising also became the central theme for the Mobile World Congress this year. One such development of advertising on mobile TV came with the announcement of Vodafone Italy to launch an ad-funded video service.