Freyburg

The New York Times has an article up about the coming wave of mobile TV headed to North America. Asia and Europe have had mobile TV on their phones for years, and it’s frankly surprising that we haven’t followed suit.

Or maybe it isn’t. Canada’s mobile industry is woefully behind the times, and one more deficiency isn’t in the least bit surprising. Bell offers a Mobile TV app, and Rogers presumably has some weak-assed mobile version of RODO in the works, but frankly I have better luck rolling my own media solution on my iPhone. I have Al Jazeera English, NHK World, Livestation Mobile’s numerous streaming news channels, and the TWIT network, and that’s without even trying.

I think before North American carriers get around to providing mobile TV, appmakers and content providers large and small will work around them and provide their own solutions.

According to this article in the New York Times, people are shifting rapidly to less voice, more data on their cell phones. In a few years it seems likely that data use, not minutes will be how your mobile bill gets compiled. Of course in Canada we’ll stay with the old system until it collapses around us. That’s just what we do.

I’ve just written two editorials for Techi.com. One of them has yet to be published, but my piece on HP’s acquisition of Palm and Apple’s purchase of Siri is now up on the site. Neat!