MUMBAI, India & BALTIMORE—In a development that could advance efforts to bring NextGen TV to cellphones, FreeStream Technologies, Lava International and HMD have announced launch plans for Direct-to-Mobile (D2M) phones in the runup to large-scale field trials in India.
Direct-to-Mobile is a broadcasting technology based on ATSC 3.0 D2M that uses terrestrial TV broadcast airwaves to deliver live TV, video, audio & text messages, entertainment, sports, educational programming and emergency alerts directly to phones without the need for Wi-Fi or internet service.
Low-cost feature phones, smartphones and tablets using Tejas Networks (Saankhya Labs) SL-3000 D2M chipsets have been previously announced.
In addition, Tejas Networks has developed a suite of infrastructure hardware and software products for D2M deployment in collaboration with Sinclair, Inc.
This technology has been under test in live networks by Prasar Bharati in partnership with IIT Kanpur, where FreeStream was incubated, and Tejas Networks over the past several years.
Backers of NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 hope the D2M phones will bring the technology to the large Indian market, which has 1.05 billion cellphone users. Adoption there could also help put ATSC 3.0 D2M technologies on a trajectory that might bring affordable handsets with ATSC 3.0 receivers to the U.S. market.
Sinclair President and CEO Chris Ripley said: “Large-scale adoption of ATSC 3.0 in affordable mobile devices vindicates Sinclair’s forethought in leading U.S. and global deployment of this broadcast standard as ‘mobile first’ and in investing in Made by India technology. To meet future 6G goals, we are spearheading the next release of the standard ‘Broadcast to Everything’ (B2X) which will unleash next generation broadcast apps for numerous verticals.”
“We are pleased that Lava and HMD are doing the groundwork to rapidly create a viable device ecosystem for a nationwide deployment road map,” added Sumeet Nindrajog, director of Free Stream Technologies. “Their willingness to supply in scale is the best vote of confidence for the future success of D2M.”
Incubated at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK), Free Stream Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is focused on developing, deploying, and managing nationwide network infrastructure for cutting-edge Direct-to-Mobile (D2M) broadcast technology and related platform services.
Lava International Limited, headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, is a mobile handset and solutions company. The company’s corporate office and manufacturing facility is equipped with a production capacity of 42.52 million handsets per year.
Headquartered in Espoo, Finland, HMD Oy (“HMD”) is the exclusive licensee of the Nokia brand for phones and tablets. HMD designs and markets a range of smartphones and feature phones and an expanding portfolio of innovative service offerings.
