MobiTV teams with IPWireless

MobiTV, which produces TV and music services for mobile devices, and IPWireless, which is currently developing technology that will allow wireless operators to use their spectrum more efficiently to deliver live TV, announced Wednesday that they plan to work together.

MobiTV and IPWireless will co-develop solutions that enable operators to migrate subscribers in high-usage areas to IPWireless' new TDtv technology. TDtv allows mobile operators to broadcast TV content over their existing 3G wireless spectrum using multicast technology, instead of the more commonly used unicast technology. MobiTV currently uses unicast to deliver its programming today.

Unicast technology transmits signals between a single sender and a single receiver. This means that the same piece of content has to be retransmitted over the network every time a different user wants to view it, eating up valuable bandwidth along the way. By contrast, multicast allows one copy of a TV show or song to be distributed over the network to multiple recipients at once, allowing for more efficient use of the network when several people want to watch the same content at the same time.