Q&A: PacketVideo Network Solutions - May 2004  

As part of a series of questions and answers with companies influencing the UK digital sports space, Sport and Technology spoke to Anthony Sheehan, European director of content and application services at mobile media company PacketVideo Network Solutions. A wholly owned subsidiary of Alcatel, PacketVideo Network Solutions was founded in 1998 to enable advanced multimedia services, including MPEG-4 video, over next-generation mobile phone networks. Several original PacketVideo investors, such as Motorola and Siemens are also customers as well as distribution and development partners. PacketVideo Network Solutions has recently integrated its technologies with over 20 mobile operators as well as service providers such as Mobix Interactive so these networks can deliver content in the industry standard 3GPP format.

How would you describe what you do at PacketVideo?

“PacketVideo Network Solutions is the leading supplier of standards-based mobile audio and video delivery platforms to mobile operators, service providers and media companies.”

What is PacketVideo’s experience in sport?

“Our sports clients include Sky, Plazamedia in Germany (for the Bundesliga) and Euro 2004 (via a network operator) as well as individual clubs. We also provided a WiFi service for the Val di Fiemme World Nordic Ski Championship in 2003 which was part of a broader WiFi testing project owned by Telecom Italia. Our objective for the latter was to help people understand how easy it is to receive high quality video and advanced information services through a combination of WiFi access and a small size device.”

And within the mobile space?

“PacketVideo Network Solutions works with over 20 mobile operators including DoCoMo, Orange and T-Mobile, as well as service providers and media companies to enable them to deliver mobile video and audio services.”

How important is exposure to PacketVideo?

“Our brand is never visible to the consumer, we are not a service provider.”

What challenges do you face in your business?

“One of the key challenges we are helping to address is the gulf that can exist between mobile operators and media or rights owners. Some rights owners are still holding out for unrealistically high licence deals, operators are only slowly realising that they need to share more revenue and market information with their content partners. Geographical packaging of rights is becoming increasingly important. PacketVideo is currently discussing with public service broadcasters in the UK, Italy and Norway on how to enforce geographical constraints imposed in rights packages. The BBC for example is interested to explore how to offer certain new media services to its UK licence-fee paying customers and others to people based overseas.”

Which content do you think works best on mobile phones?

“One of the things that has worked well is the delivery of live content where fans have been able to plug into a live event. That fits well with the characteristics of a mobile user. Goals, sendings off and short highlights are the right style for what users want on their phones. The challenge is turning it around quickly enough.”

What about billing models?

“We are currently being asked to look at some different models such as usage-based pricing, which we will introduce where we believe a service will be successful.”

What do you see as offering the biggest potential within mobile sport?

“Mobile technology offers so many opportunities. For example, 18 months ago we worked with a Finnish sports marketing company Makra and a Finnish second division football [soccer] team that was bottom of its league. Fans were allowed to be the managers and voted for transfers and teams selections etc by SMS and the manager was obliged to follow their views. The pay-off was that the team won promotion.”

How do you envisage the future for sport on mobile phones?

“Quality content and rapid time to handsets combined with sensible billing models will be key. The perception that people will pay a pound for video clips on their phones is proving to be tough. And the rights issues surrounding that are proving to be an ever-deepening nightmare. Looking ahead, football [soccer] will drive mobile content but will remain a challenge for mobile operators who have to cover whole leagues in order to provide any value. Sometimes I feel that mobile operators might be better off targeting one-off or annual events.”

This article was seen first by people who receive the monthly newsletter, join them.