The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Prasar Bharati the India’s public service broadcaster have been exploring the feasibility of a technology that permits to broadcast video and different varieties of multimedia content to mobile phones directly, without the need of any active internet connection.

HIGHLIGHTS
Direct-to-mobile (D2M) boost consumption of broadband and utilization of spectrum
It is similar to the way of using FM radio over the phones to listen
Can be used directly to broadcast content related with citizen-centric information

The technology is known as ‘direct-to-mobile’ (D2M) broadcasting, which guarantees to boost consumption of broadband and utilization of spectrum.

What is direct-to-mobile broadcasting?

Basically, the technology is based on the convergence of broadband and broadcast, using the mobile phones which will receive terrestrial digital TV. It will be as similar to the way people use to listen to FM radio over the phones, where the receiver can tap into the radio frequencies on the phone itself. Using D2M, multimedia content can directly beam to phones.

The idea which is behind the technology is that people can possibly use this directly to broadcast content which is associated with citizen-centric information. Later this can be used to counter fake news, issue emergency alerts and offer assistance in disaster management, among different other things. Apart from that, people can use it to broadcast live news, sports etc. on mobile phones. Along with the content that need to stream without any kind of buffering while not consuming any sort of internet data.

What may be the buyer and business impact of this?

Well, for the consumers, a technology like this mean that they might be able to access multimedia content from Video on Demand (VoD) or Over the Top (OTT) content platforms without any kind of exhaustion of mobile data, and significantly, at a nominal rate. The technology will enable people from rural areas, with restricted or no internet access, to give a watch to the video content.

On the other hand, for businesses the key benefit of the technology is that it can help to enable telecom service provides to offload the video traffic from their mobile network to the broadcast network, therefore serving to them to decongest valuable mobile spectrum. Well, this can additionally improve the usage of mobile spectrum and can free up bandwidth which can help to reduce call drops, increase data speeds etc.

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