Finnish Mobile TV

‘It’s a good extension to traditional television’ was a common refrain among the mobile TV test users. The Finnish Mobile TV project followed the experiences of a group of mobile TV users to discover which new services showed the most promise for the future.

In the Finnish Mobile TV project, a group of residents from the Helsinki metropolitan area was chosen to try out both commercially available mobile television services and new services still in the development stage for a period of six months. The 27 participants represented a cross-section of different age groups in society.

Local, topical and personally-relevant content attracted the most interest from mobile television users. They regarded mobile TV as an extension of traditional TV and above all as an entertainment media. At the same time, news drew the most interest in mobile TV content.

 The excellent sound and picture quality was a surprise to a large part of the test users. Most found it relatively easy to follow mobile TV from a small device despite the screen being considerably smaller than traditional television.   

At breakfast, during commuting and late at night

The test group watched mobile TV mostly at breakfast, during their commute to and from work, and in the evening. The general opinion among users was that mobile TV was easy-to-use especially since familiar services such as Teletext were available. The project, which was aimed at service developers and residents of the Helsinki metropolitan area, began in 2006 and ended in 2008.

Forum Virium Helsinki was responsible for coordinating the project and for project communications. The cooperation partners were Digita, Elisa, the City of Helsinki, IBM, Logica, MTV Media, Nokia, SWelcom, TeliaSonera, Destia, Tieto, Veikkaus, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, YIT and YLE - the Finnish Broadcasting Company.  

www.finnishmobiletv.com

Further information
Development Director Pekka Koponen, 
Tel. +358 40  5017114, 
pekka.koponen(at)forumvirium.fi