Qualcomm to put the wooden stake through FLO TV's heart by year end

Back during this past Summer, we reported that Qualcomm was undecided about what to do with its FLO TV service. The company did not want to it to end up as just a mobile television service. Instead, Qualcomm was looking at other ways to get a higher revenue stream from FLO TV, even considering offering the bandwidth to mobile carriers with congested pipelines.

According to sources, Bill Stone, the President of FLO TV, said last week that the mobile T.V. service was shutting down by the end of this year. Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs has stated in the past that he has been trying to unload the division, but nothing had ever been said about shutting it down completely. Jacobs did say that even if the service is shut down, it would not be a total loss for Qualcomm. "The spectrum itself is worth almost $2 billion based on the latest spectrum auction.,” the CEO noted.

One problem with FLO TV is that it has been made available on feature phones only with the exception of the Windows Mobile flavored HTC Imagio. Despite offering a separate viewer and an iPhone adapter, the service continued to produce unacceptable results. And if Qualcomm does shut down the service, it would leave Mobile ATSC to handle OTA mobile television service in the U.S., which is an optimized version of the HDTV standard designed to allow signals to reach high speed vehicles including trains.

As for those customers of Verizon and AT&T who use Qualcomm's mobile television service, all three firms are in talks to determine the future of its wholesale mobile T.V. service, but those operations continue for now.

source: paidContent

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