Scene 1: You are at the airport and your flight has been delayed. You have all the time in the world until you get a new flight schedule. Why not catch up with the latest movie you missed the other day on TV, on your mobile? Sounds exciting?

Scene 2: You are rushing to the living room after finishing your chores for the day to watch your favourite saas-bahu TV soap. But your hubby is already on the edge on the couch, watching the final over of a one-day cricket match-there's no way he's going to let you anywhere near the TV. How about watching the latest episode of the gripping drama on your mobile?

'Television on the Move', 'Bonsai TV'–these are some clever headlines you might have spotted in dailies on mobile TV. Thanks to this technology, now you won't have to miss your favourite TV show or cricket match. You can download the content and watch them at leisure in a personal ambience. Here, you won't have to wait endlessly for data connections to retrieve information-it's instantly turned on, and you can access your favourite content immediately.

Beyond News Movies
However, mobile TV is much more than watching news and movies on suitably enabled portable devices. While TV content reaches the mobile customer via the broadcast network, the primary mobile service provider uses the cellular network to offer return path from the customer to the a broadcast manager, thus, converting passive television viewing into a truly interactive experience.

Today, mobile TV is widely accepted as the growth market for telcos, content providers, and broadcasters worldwide. The global mobile entertainment market has already become a huge hit in several parts of the world. It is expected to grow to a $38.12 bn market by 2011, according to reports from Informa.

And the good news is that India has caught up with the technology quite fast. The mobile subscriber base in India has crossed the 100 mn mark, and the country will soon be one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world.

Much like the way any Bollywood blockbuster requires the right mix of script, actors, and technicians, the success of mobile TV lies in the right mix of wireless operators, content developers, and audio-visual broadcasters. Operators like BPL Mobile and Reliance Infocomm are coming up with mobile TV offerings, and mobile phone vendors like Nokia are busy testing the mobile TV technology in India. In their efforts to capture this lucrative market, these players are trying to forge partnerships with myriad players in the content value chain-established content providers like Warner Bros, Walt Disney Company, Mauj, Indiagames, Soundbuzz (music), and Coruscant Tec, and distributors like Cartoon Network, National Geographic, BBC Worldwide, ZEE TV, Sun TV, and HBO.

Challenges Aplenty
The viewing experience and services of mobile TV over cellular networks differ in many ways from traditional TV. Mobile TV over cellular networks allows viewers to enjoy personalised, interactive TV with content especially adapted to suit the mobile medium. Other services like video-on-demand (VoD), Podcast support, and personal video roaming (PVR) are also offered in a total mobile TV solution along with related e-commerce and electronic service guides (ESG).

Mobile TV is certainly a revolutionary concept, but in order to become a success, it requires a technically advanced OSS/BSS infrastructure. Any service delivery platform can come up with all the features/services mentioned above, but what can set a mobile TV service provider several notches above its competitors would be an OSS/BSS system that churns revenue well, and has the ability to charge accurately for the usage of this service.

Finding the right formula for this could be tricky for the operator. On one hand, there is a whole new set of content players to partner with-where SLAs and revenue sharing agreements are to be considered. On the other hand, there is a new set of systems to interface with, like video server, middleware, and digital rights management (DRM), with functionalities to satiate facilities like VoD, iTV, broadcast, pay-per-view, and digital video recording.

A Critical Differentiator
The investment of a mobile TV operator has to be very high to reach mobile entertainment to the end-customer. The big question he faces is: 'How do I optimize the payback?'

This brings to the forefront, the most strategic and critical component of his service offering-pricing. The operator will have to take control of the two most critical aspects: price bands and the right content. Establishing the right price for the right content to deserving customers is very crucial for the success of the service. If the operator fails to tread carefully on this ground, it could backfire since his brand identity, customer trust, and RoI are at stake. The success of a service provider is also dependent on how he can attract customers by bringing in a suitable portfolio of content services.

The mobile TV service provider should be able to tap revenue efficiently, especially when high-value premium content is delivered to customers, because missing a single usage record could lead to erosion in total revenue.

In order to track such probable leakages, the service provider should essentially put in place a dynamic billing system that shall ensure optimal revenue tapping from high-value content services, and shall amicably settle the content revenue between the service provider and its partners, transparently and accurately.

The Right Ingredient?
The billing system, in such a case, has to seamlessly interface and communicate with various elements in service delivery platforms like video server, middleware, DRM and AAA (authentication, authorization and accounting) systems, to allow provisioning of on-demand and interactive services to the end-customer. Authenticated usage records have to be fully captured through a rule-driven mediation layer and fed to the rating engine. The charges attached depend on the content, context, time-of-use/download, content provider, location, QoS or session. Revenue leakage can be effectively plugged if usage is first authenticated, usage records are then fully piped in and finally, rating engine completes full-scale charging as per the service provider's business rules.

The billing system should also be capable of giving a consolidated view of all the products offered, thus, helping the operator to derive effective and attractive cross-product bundles and discounts, personalized for specific customers and customer segments.

On the partner management front, the billing system should be capable of providing a complete delivery chain view to effectively manage various SLAs and revenue sharing agreements with each content provider involved. It should also be able to derive the share of revenue to content providers and account for the content used by the end-customer through adequate log reports for reconciliation.

The fast acceptance of mobile TV in India proves that it has all the ingredients of a blockbuster. Service providers are all set to enjoy the fruits of a lucrative mobile TV market with an advanced service delivery platform and an effective billing system. All they need to understand is that the strategic deployment of a billing system is the key differentiator that would enable them to make their service a runaway hit.

Pradeep Murthy
The author is head, CME, Apac, SunTec Business Solutions
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in