Voicemail, text messages, ring tones, now tv and video: Cell phone carriers are doing their best to increase the popularity of video and television on cell phones. Right now, features such as tv and video are only available in a limited capacity, but in a few months that may change as carriers are continually adding new programming to cell phones in addition to the brief video clips currently out there. Carriers are looking at adding full-length shows to cell phones, even adding these shows so they can be viewed live. Here’s a sneak preview of what some of the major carriers are doing:

Verizon Offers Variety

Beginning March 31st, will start to offer CBS, MTV, NBC, and Fox programming on their cell phones in major cities. Will offer these tv shows on their phones after these shows appear on regular television. Plans to offer live broadcast tv on their cell phones. Likely to be granted exclusive rights from ESPN to offer its programming on their phones. Would like to expand its Fios tv service to wireless handsets, which would let users control their DVRs from their phones without having to be at home. Has a service called Vcast, which offers short video clips for cell phones that has been available for 2 years. Customers can get calling, wireless, Internet, and video services as part of a package for $160.92 per month. Or Verizon users can pay $15 per month or $3 per day for the multimedia available on its phones.
Sprint Nextel

Owns a video service available on cell phones. Offers tv news clips from channels like Discovery and CNN. Has not announced whether it plans to offer a live tv broadcast service to cell phone subscribers.
AT&T

Provides same-day video coverage for the Mercedes-Benz fashion week in New York among other fashion events on their cell phones, allowing subscribers to see just as fashion designers, buyers, and celebrities do in person, the latest clothing designs for the upcoming fall season over their cell phones. Subscribers can feel like they are there in person while watching the shows and viewing the back stage reports. For access, interested customers can subscribe to a $19.99 monthly media package, which includes video clips, Internet, email, messages, news, weather, sports scores, and movie times.
Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Communications, and Advanced Newhouse

Will offer a cable tv guide and some video content on their phones. For Comcast users, to get access to the cable tv guide, users have to pay an extra $15 per month for a data package. For an extra $25 per month, Comcast will give access to the cable tv guide, video content, and Internet access with email.
Vring, Vring From Vringo.com

Can record a cell phone video greeting by using your cell phone’s camera or by choosing your favorite movie, music or tv content, then sending it to your phone. If your friends sign up for it, they will see your video when you call their cell phones and you can see theirs when they call you. Best of all, though users do need to pay for any licensed content they select, the Vringo application itself is free.
Disadvantages of Mobile TV and Video Features

The features listed above sound great for consumers, and seem to ensure profits for carriers, but if carriers do not predict ahead, they could be faced with a major downside to their efforts. Because video takes up 10 times the bandwidth voice does on cell phones, capacity on the network could be exceeded in 2007 if enough people watch just 10 minutes of video per day.

The 3G networks carriers have in the U.S. now cannot handle a lot of video traffic. The networks are divided into cells and users in the same cell share the same bandwidth. Content is delivered when it is requested by the individual subscriber, meaning signals are transmitted to users one at a time. So if 300 users request the same ESPN video highlights from the weekend to watch, the network has to send a copy of the video clip to each user individually. The same process happens when subscribers are talking on their cell phones or sending text messages but these actions are relatively insignificant in terms of capacity because they take up very little bandwidth. Video, on the other hand, takes up about 10 times more bandwidth. Too much traffic is precisely what happened in South Korea. To solve the problem, a separate network to broadcast mobile tv was built.

Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and AT&T’s phone service (formerly Cingular Wireless) all deliver content when it is requested by the individual subscriber. This makes delivering high volumes of tv programming difficult. Unlike those carriers though, MediaFlo network broadcasts video to cell phone users all at the same time like regular broadcast television. MediaFlo’s service will be available on LG’s VX 9400 and one phone from Samsung.

Stay Tuned

Thus, far video on cell phones has not been popular with consumers. However, wireless carriers are doing their best to stress the convenience of mobile tv. They are accumulating more content and doing their best to improve image quality. Companies are also restructuring their usability component too, planning to offer customers a single bill for all services including tv, wireless, broadband, and voice, training sales and support staff to handle new services, and simplifying cell phone interfaces so that users can easily navigate and feel comfortable using their phones. Consumers have not seen the last of video availability on cell phones and are certain to see even more in the coming months, so stay tuned.

With the increase of terrorist attacks, and possible crippling of the cellular networks, people attending conventions have found the viability of renting satellite phones, finding the only way to communicate anywhere with anyone at anytime. If you are a wild life photographer, going for major shoots in the deepest jungles, where the need to communication becomes difficult, the satellite phone will be of much use in times of your need to communicate. Satellite phones are mostly useful in places with no terrestrial infrastructure or in places where the infrastructure is not usable, such as, hurricane inflicted areas, flood affected areas, etc.

Today, leading industries including, Iridium, Globalstar & Thuraya are providing satellite phone solutions, with each of them offering their own unique benefits and advantages. There are various options for you to choose from, with the best phone choice depending upon your application and destination, remembering that a satellite phone does not always offer global coverage or translates into world phone. You may visit the various websites which list of the types of phones available from different companies, highlighting the features with coverage area and rates. It is recommended that you review the facts and figures before contemplating on taking up such a satellite phone.

Satellite phones made its debut in 1990s with a lot of fanfare. While commercial applications of such phones did not commence in earnest till about 3 to 4 years back, the satellite phone companies went through a lot of rough weather, failing financially and technically. Some problems do exist even today, when a satellite operator’s network fail. There could be other reasons as well.

Iridium satellite boasts of over 100,000 subscribers with its 66 satellites and is supposed to be just behind Globalstar with 115,000 subscribers. Iridium has applied for another spectrum of 3.1MHz to meet its growing demand of about 1,000 new subscribers per month. Satellite phones are expensive and costly to operate, but yet it serves the purpose in communication where there is no other way of communicating.

A satellite phone, often called ‘satphone’, is a mobile telephone system, that communicates directly with the orbiting communication satellites and depending on the network architecture, the coverage may be global, or only for specific regions. These types of phones generally operates with the low orbiting satellites (LEOs), which is believed to provide a wider coverage and better communication clarity. The size of a satellite phone is comparable to the size and weight of the mobile phones that were used in the late 1980s or early 1990s and has a large retractable antenna. The phone equipment itself is known as a terminal.

The main difference between a satellite phone and that of a cellular mobile phone is that, while you communicate with the nearest base station in case of a cellular phone, a satellite phone communicates with the nearest satellite. This type of satphone connections do not depend upon any network. Some of this communication technique covers a large area, with the help of multiple low orbiting satellites, relaying the signals from one to the other in order to connect you to the destination that you wish to be connected.

Some of the satellite phones use satellites in geostationary orbit, maintaining almost total global coverage operating between three to four such satellites, thus reducing cost. It is important to note that geostationary orbiting satellites are placed at about 22,000 to 30,000 miles above the Earth. The LEOs, as the name signifies, are much lower in space from the Earth, 400 to 700 miles, and as such, a single satellite has limited coverage. Therefore multiple such satellites direct your call to the required destination. On the other hand, LEOs provide better communication clarity than geostationary satellites, because of the inherent delay that it introduce. The least delay with such satellites is 0.5 seconds and this is a major disadvantage of geo stationary satellites.

In case of satellite phones communicating with geostationary satellites, the main disadvantage is that, the phone requires a large antenna system for signal transmission and reception. In such cases, the antenna needs to be of high gain, which needs more power to operate. Consequently the size of the phone also increases and can be compared to the size of terrestrial mobile phones in the past, relative to the current tiny terrestrial mobile phones. Satellite phones require a clear view of the sky to operate and will not function inside a building, car or a boat. It would require external antenna system to operate in such environments. This is clearly a serious disadvantage.

In working of a cellular phone, the principle is based on dividing an area into zones or base stations called ‘cells’. As you communicate while you move, you leave a particular zone and enter another. Your call is handed over from your previous cell where you were, to the new one where you are currently passing through. Your communication is electronically switched to the cell where you are in. Every cell phone and your Sim card with hold adequate information regarding the identity of your mobile handset and therefore the network is aware of where to locate you when you are leaving one cell and entering the other.

In remote areas, such communication is not possible owing to the absence of cellular network. You may have experienced that, while using your mobile handset, as you passed different zones, at a particular area, you lose your connection. The cell phone network apparently ends there. The network operates on the principle of ‘line of sight’, so that the towers, set up for cellular communication, must be able to see each other. Within each cell the communication is limited to about 31 miles, as the crow flies. Communication difficulties arise in places where the tower of the cell that you have just left cannot properly see the tower of your present cell zone. This creates dropped calls or breaking up of voices. There are ofcourse other reasons for such happenings.

Satellite phones do not have such restrictions, except it needs either the clear view of the sky or an external antenna to operate. When you switch on your satellite phone, the signal goes up to the satellites and gets hooked on to that particular one or a set of satellites, with which you are registered. When making a call, the coverage that your call should have, is determined and its relayed from one satellite to the other. On reaching the destination, the signal is directed to the relevant Earth station, from where it is directed by the gateway the to the call destination. If you should be calling a satellite phone from your mobile, a reverse action takes place. The gateway processes the call and switches the call information. If you should be calling another compatible satellite phone from yours, your call information is sent up to the satellites, which is then transmitted to the Earth station. In turn the Earth station transmits it back to the satellites and then connects you to the called satellite phone.

Satellite telephony is becoming more and more necessary with the radio frequency bandwidths getting exhausted and also that he cable lines cannot be fixed to all the parts of the earth. Satellite phone technology is considered to be a formidable invention to keep communication going in this world, with its ability to let you communicate even on the move and to any part of this planet, no matter where you are. When you are lost in an expedition, a satellite phone with you would prove to be a life-saver. You will be constantly in touch with any part of the world with your phone.

With the onslaught of modern technology, the humble cellular phone has been developed into a far more useful and complex gadget to suit people’s every need. Its functions no longer limit themselves to sending SMS messages and calling only. The most recent feature in demand is that of MP3 players for playing music and video files. Music on the go is the latest craze that has affected even cellular phones thus making the incorporation of MP3 players into such phones indispensable.

As a result of this demand for portable music, the majority of phone manufacturers always include MP3 ringtone players in their new model units. To prove this point, one only has to look at the Sony Ericson Walkman series, especially the W890i. The W890i, considered as one of the best Sony Ericson Walkman cell phone models around, is able to play MP3, WAV and WMA despite its slim 10 mm thickness and 78 g weight. People are impressed by its 4 Megabytes memory for storing music files despite its thin appearance. The Walkman series is decidedly superior to other Sony Ericson unit models in terms of its capability to play music files with superb audio output, which makes it count as one of the best music cell phones for ringtones available on the market.

Yet another cell phone company, the famous Nokia brand, also makes certain that the majority of their new cell phones can play MP3 ringtones. There are several reports that proclaim the Nokia 6300 as the company’s answer to Sony Ericson’s Walkman phones, due to the 6300′s ability to provide high quality audio output. There are others that liken another model, the Nokia 5300, to the Walkman cell phone, because of the 5300′s main feature for playing MP3 and additional media files. Besides that, the Nokia 5300 has an easy access button for play, pause, and next functions enabling the user to easily listen to his favorite MP3 files on his cell phone.

Not to be outdone, the Motorola phone company has come out with its own line of MP3 ringtone playing cell phones. For the makers of the iPhone, this highly advanced cell phone was also designed to play MP3 music files. Its interactive music player is the favorite feature of most iPhone users.

Taking a look at all these cell phone innovations aimed at MP3-loving phone users, nobody can deny how important it is for cell phone manufacturers to include MP3 ringtone playing features in their latest phones. For today’s cell phone users, the MP3 player feature is definitely a standard function that should be added to brand new phone models, regardless of which cell phone company produced them. For discerning phone users, they will not settle for anything less than high audio quality MP3 enabled cell phones.

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