Since Maxwell predicted the existence of electromagnetic wave in 1865, people had been studying the wireless technology for over 200 years to find more flexible, smooth and real communication. This dream came true when the movie was invented in the early 1900s. Then while integrated circuits technology made a great development in the late 1900s, the portable communication equipments were becoming smaller and smaller. By the year of 2000, scientists finally achieved to combine the three technologies above into a novel system and equipment, called Mobile Broadcast TV (MBT).
MBT makes it possible to provide the public information or entertainments at anywhere. This flexible, smooth and real communication technology gets the public to watch broadcast TV in hand and floating. Now over 10 million audience watch MBT everyday in Shanghai by cell-phone, PDA, mobile computer and mobile TV in the subway, bus and taxi. The industrial chain makes over $1 billion profit for MBT. It has become one of the most rapidly developing technologies in the 21st century. Moreover, it is definitely making a technology revolution for the public communication as the technology released the fixed TV to mobile and transformed the voice-only communication into the complex multimedia broadcast.
However, although MBT is one of the most attractive technologies at present, it still does not have a killer app partly due to two following factors.
One is the establishment difficulty of the broadcast TV system, which is the basis for MBT application. Thus, the government should allow the operators for legitimize use of the frequency, control the signal source/contents and monitor their operations. But the hardware construction is expensive and time-consuming. It needs to set up satellites, terrestrial broadcasting stations and many broadcasting towers in the city to strengthen the signal so as to get the communication smooth. Besides, the system establishment also requires contribution of the large amount of new broadcasting programs. All of these require a great powerful financial support from and administrative control by the government. The broadcasting systems require government has a powerful dominant and national power. So only few developed countries have established the MBT broadcasting system such as USA, China, Japan and EU.
Another factor is the popularization of the mobile equipment in the public. Firstly, the equipment should be cheap but still with a high quality. Only if the mobile equipment is small enough to carry around and simple enough to control by everyone, customers will be attracted to buy one. Secondly, the service fee should also be cheap enough but still with a good quality.
When both factors are mature someday, I believe the MBT will become a killer app as no one would refuse to watch TV he/she is interested at anywhere and anytime. By then, this kind of powerful multimedia communication technology will become as popular as mobile phones.
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