With Telstra recently launching a range of Foxtel channels on its Next-G handsets, Vodafone has launched an even bigger range of TV channels to watch, with 22 in total. They also have an Australian-first EPG on your phone that shows you what’s on right now. Vodafone have also had to change advertising details for their new 3.5G HSDPA modem thanks to Telstra.

The new range of channels now includes live streaming broadcasts of Australia’s public TV broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) which focuses on multicultural TV programming but is increasingly morphing into a regular free-to-air service with TV shows like Mythbusters, South Park and even in-program advertising (something it never did before until just recently, with ads previously limited to being aired before and after TV shows).

Other live streaming channels include Sky News Business, Sky News UK, BBC World and Fashion TV, while channels featuring ‘looped’ streaming content include shows like ‘Naked News’ and other music and entertainment programming such as music video TV show ‘Rage’.

The channels are only available to Vodafone customers with a 3G phone, and are all available at different pricing, with $8 multi-channel monthly subscription packs available, while individual channel pricing varying with a good benchmark for many being $5 per month or $1 per day.

With the advent of the $8 per month multi-channel packs, these offer the best value for Vodafone customers interested in those blocks of channels. The streams are also being offered at 128kbps, far better than the 64kbps efforts used by most mobile phone companies in the past to deliver streaming TV, with 128kbps channels looking sharper and clearer, although still nowhere near the absolute smoothness and clarity you’ll get from a regular television.

All of the mobile phone operators can clearly see that mobile video is a popular trend, with existing streaming TV channels being an obvious way to instantly deliver video to customers.

Vodafone also promise that the channels can be watched 24×7 non-stop if desired, without incurring extra fees, although given that people generally don’t have time to watch their mobile TV shows or channels for long periods of time, the ‘dip in and dip out’ nature of mobile TV watching should work in Vodafone’s favour, as it would appear that this is what they are banking on to minimize streaming costs.

Other providers such as Hutchison’s ‘3’ mobile carrier make the same promise, but on the Telstra Next-G network, users are automatically logged off after 15 minutes of continuous viewing, forcing the user to start the stream again to continue watching.

The EPG is also pretty cool, showing you the schedule and letting you instantly tune into ‘what’s showing now’ from the list of channels and shows. Suggestions that perhaps you’d one day be able to use the EPG to actually record TV shows directly to your phone were entertained, especially as this has already been spoken about overseas and theoretically already achieved, but Vodafone isn’t offering that service just yet, with space limitations on most phones a likely reason why beyond and copyright issues that may arise.
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Vodafone has also been in the news lately responding to a Telstra claim that their 3.5G HSDPA USB modem for desktops or laptops was being advertised as working at a faster speed than the network currently supported. Vodafone’s advertising claimed that the modem would deliver 3.6Mbps speeds, instead of 1.8Mbps speeds which the majority of Vodafone’s network is capable of.

Vodafone asserted that this statement was indicative of what the modem itself could deliver, rather than the network speeds you’d actually receive, and Telstra was able to convince telecommunications authorities that Vodafone’s advertising was a tad misleading.

In actual fact, Vodafone does have at least a couple of trial 3.6Mbps enabled towers in the Sydney CBD, but as these are only trial towers with the majority of the network only able to handle up to 1.8Mbps speeds, Vodafone changed their advertising to match the current speeds of their USB modem, although Vodafone are no doubt not standing still on the issue and are working on getting more towers activated to 3.6Mbps over the following weeks and months.

To counter this, Telstra has already begun trials of a 3.5Mbps HSDPA network that can handle speeds of up to 7.2Mbps and even 14.4Mbps, with at least 7.2Mbps speeds due on the network by March 2007.

Telstra also offers a massive footprint across Australia able to reach 98% of the population in not only metropolitan areas but a huge number of regional and rural areas as well, verifying Telstra’s claim to have a 3.5G (and 3G) network 100 times the size of its competitors.

Whichever way you look at it, there’s increasingly a growing range of TV channels to watch on your phone, and a rapid wireless broadband race underway to deliver high speed wireless broadband over the 3.5G mobile phone network across Australia. We’re not sure how well this bodes for upcoming WiMAX networks but for now cellular based wireless broadband is, so far, winning the race.

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