Sprint debuts cell TV service

NEW YORK — Sprint Corp. has added a television service for cell phones with real-time programs, albeit somewhat choppy, from cable networks including CNBC and ABC News.

The new MobiTV service, available now, costs $9.99 per month in addition to the monthly fee of $15 that Sprint subscribers pay to use the Internet data connection on their mobile phones. Other networks featured on the service include MSNBC, Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel.

Although the audio for MobiTV programs plays in a continuous stream, the cell phone screen will not display the equivalent of full-motion video like that seen on a real television. Instead, the video will play at a rate of one or two frames per second, as compared with more than 20 frames per second for real TV.

The programs on most of the MobiTV channels will be identical to the actual programs playing at that hour on the corresponding cable channels, although with a lag of perhaps a minute due to the time it takes to process and transmit the content for a wireless device.

The move brings at least one cellular carrier a step closer to transforming the over-hyped concept of next-generation wireless services to reality.

Multimedia services such as Web browsing, music and video have been held up by limitations in the capabilities of both handsets and wireless networks. But ongoing improvements in the phones and network technology are now enabling richer content.

Still, both Sprint and MobiTV provider Idetic Inc. were careful to not to set expectations for the new service too high.

"This isn’t the kind of thing where you’re going to watch a movie, but it is the kind of thing where the frame rate is fine" for viewing a program such as a newscast, said Paul Scanlan, a co-founder of Idetic. He also cautioned that normal limitations of mobile phone use will still apply.

MobiTV was developed and operated by Idetic Inc., a privately held technology company based in Berkeley, Calif.