Qualcomm’s FLO TV Is Back On Track; Lighting Up More Markets After Digital TV Transition
Qualcomm’s FLO TV, which broadcasts TV to mobile devices in the U.S. through its major partners AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), said it is on track to reach its goal of covering 100 major markets and more than 200 million potential customers nationwide by the end of the year.
The company was delayed when the government decided to put off the transition from analog to digital TV signals. FLO was waiting for spectrum that was going to be freed up from that process. The new deadline is June 12, and today, the company announced that immediately following the transition this Friday, it will go live in 15 new markets, including Boston, Houston, Miami and San Francisco, and will expand in existing markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC. More on MocoNews, here.
Weren't we told that we had to go through this forced digital transition march in order to free up spectrum for emergency services? Maybe this wonderful and completely necessary mobile TV can come to my rural market so I can watch when my digital signal falls off the cliff just a few miles from the transmitter, unlike my former analog sig.
FLO TV uses exactly one channel, UHF 55, throughout the entire country. All the other former broadcast TV channels from 52-69 are still available for other uses.
Digital signals "fall off a cliff" as they weaken precisely because they are so efficient. If you keep everything else the same (transmitter power, location, antenna heights, etc) the digital signal won't cut out until long after the analog signal has become unwatchable.