The results of the FinPilot 2 project, the second phase of FiMTV, will be announced at the final seminar in May 2008
The Finnish Mobile TV project was inspired by the first mobile-TV-pilot “FinPilot”, which was carried out in 2005. The experience from the pilot and its results showed that there was demand for mobile-TV services and that people were prepared to pay for these services. Results of the FinPilot can be found on the FiMTV web site .
The steering group for this initial FinPilot, consisting of seven companies (YLE, TeliaSonera, SWelcom, Nokia, MTV Media, Elisa ja Digita) felt a need to keep up the common effort and also to broaden the scope towards a larger developer community.
Finnish Mobile TV project started in the beginning of 2006
The Forum Virium Helsinki (FVH) cluster, focusing on developing digital services and content, was founded at the end of 2005 by the initiative of City of Helsinki and several major businesses. FVH became a natural home for the new Finnish Mobile TV (FiMTV) project, which began in the beginning of 2006 and was estimated to last for two years. Companies who took part in the project were Destia, Digita, Elisa, City of Helsinki, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, MTV Media, Nokia, SWelcom, TeliaSonera, TietoEnator, Veikkaus, VTT, WM-Data, YIT and YLE.
The aim for the two-year FiMTV project was to ease the beginning of innovative and interactive mobile-TV services by offering service developers DVB-H capacity and mobile-TV devices, and by organising networking events.
In March 2006, Digita was rewarded with the DVB-H operating licence. Digita started its commercial DVB-H networking business in December 2006, covering 25 per cent of the population of Finland. You can find more information regarding the commercial launch of this project on Digitas’ website. The FiMTV project has itself remained non-commercial and neutral with issues that are not within its mandate.
The second phase of the project, the FinPilot 2, will finish in the spring of 2008
The FiMTV developing unit noticed that an area of which there was little experience was interactivity. However, interactivity is seen as an important server of added possibilities by several service providers and users alike.
The second phase of FiMTV started in 2007. The so-called FinPilot 2 focuses on the experience of end-users by especially testing the usability of interactive service units. Companies taking part in this pilot are Digita, Elisa, MTV Media, Nokia, SWelcom, TeliaSonera, TietoEnator, YLE, VTT and Forum Virium Helsinki. The results of FinPilot 2 will be announced in the spring of 2008 during the closing seminar of the project.
The FiMTV steering group has at the end of December 2007 formally concluded the project according to plans. Finland has been at the forefront of mobile TV development for some time and also encountered certain challenges along the way. The conclusion of the project is nevertheless that broadcasted TV, video-on-demand and various forms of interactivity all together will enable innovative services that eventually bring success to the concept of mobile TV.
