ROK Entertainment Group U.S. has followed in the footsteps of its UK-based parent and launched a free mobile TV service available globally. FreeBe TV, the U.S. market's first free mainstream mobile TV service, currently offers 13 channels of content, including live news, music and sports, with many more slated in the near future. Available at www.freebetv.com or from a link off of www.roktv.com, FreeBe TV is carrier agnostic and can be accessed from 21 mobile phones with WAP-enabled capabilities.

Alcatel announced the creation and launch of a multimedia mobile portal for the 7th Edition of the French Cinema Festival, to be held in seven major cities in Portugal. This mobile portal, based on Alcatel's "Mobile Kiosk", will allow Portuguese mobile users to be updated with all the latest news related to the Festival on their mobile phones. Cinema fans will be able to check scheduled events in the different cities, location and time of film showings, cinemas, discover more about artists, read film synopses, and watch trailers of a movie of their choice.

Envivio Inc. will showcase a technology demonstration with a statistical rate control module for broadcast mobile TV networks at IBC2006 in its stand #1.550.This is the world’s first demonstration of next generation IP-based statistical rate control capabilities for broadcast mobile TV and broadcast distribution applications that leverages the arrival of IP in a network that traditionally used non-IP MPEG-2 transport stream (TS).The aim of this demonstration is to illustrate within a DVB-H broadcast mobile environment the bandwidth optimization and quality gains obtained by the Envivio statistical rate control approach as compared to strict constant bit rate control.The demonstration also illustrates how this approach to statistical rate control reduces the number of elements in a system and employs standard IP routing equipment, therefore keeping costs to a minimum.

Snell & Wilcox, a world leader in image processing, conversion, and compression technologies for the film and broadcast industries, has developed a groundbreaking system for the automated repurposing and delivery of content for mobile TV applications.

Aardman Animations will, this week, launch its own mobile TV channel on the Orange TV service.

The channel, “Aardman Animations” will consist of a video loop, refreshed weekly of its own content combined with some of the best animation sourced elsewhere in Britain and around the world.

Bluestreak Network, Inc., a leading provider of mobile TV and digital television technology, today announced the completion of $8 million in C-Round equity financing by internal investors Solidarity Fund QFL, BDC Venture Capital, and First Capital Group. Proceeds will be used to expand development of the company's award-winning MachBlue platform and to increase sales and engineering efforts in Europe and Asia.

If mobile video providers are able to resolve a number of quality- and content-related issues -- and analyst firm Infonetics Research thinks they are -- revenue generated from mobile video services around the world is set to skyrocket from $46.2 million in 2005 to $5.6 billion in 2009, a staggering 11,997% jump in 5 years.

Free TV on a mobile phone, PDA or laptop became reality today with the launch of "TV Anywhere" from Hauppauge Digital. The new £99.99 (inc VAT) product allows owners to watch live and recorded TV anywhere with an internet connection - on holiday, at the station, at friends' houses, even in the sandwich bar.

Streaming21, the world's leader in broadcast-quality streaming solutions, announced the availability of 3G Relay Server, a carrier-grade mobile streaming solution that allows mobile operators and content providers to deliver multimedia contents to mobile phone subscribers over GPRS and 3G networks. A variety of video-driven services can be implemented to explore new revenue schemes in mobile services, such as mobile TV news, mobile multimedia entertainment, live sports events, real-time video surveillance, traffic monitoring, and mobile e-learning, etc.

PCCW mobile announced that it will offer a free Mobile TV trial for its 110,000 users starting from June 30. The initial Mobile TV channels to be available throughout the territory are now TV's Business News Channel and the 24-hour ATV News Channel.

Irdeto, the proven expert in content security for digital TV, IPTV and mobile, announced today that its Irdeto Mobile Broadcast security solution has been selected to protect the pioneering T-DMB trials of Guangdong Mobile TV Media. This agreement marks the first deployment of a content protection solution for a T-DMB-based mobile TV network in Asia, and is a milestone in the development of China's mobile TV industry. The service will be secured against unauthorized access by the Irdeto Mobile Broadcast CA solution, the world's first solution for mobile TV content protection.

In a keynote address at the "2006 Broadband World Forum Asia" in Hong Kong, PCCW launched its 3G mobile TV service, based on the innovative Cell Multimedia Broadcast (CMB) technology provided by Huawei Technologies. PCCW has thus become the world's first provider of real-time TV broadcast over a 3G network, using CMB technology.

Irdeto, a subsidiary of multinational South African media group Naspers and the proven expert in content security for digital TV, IPTV and mobile networks, announced today that its Irdeto Mobile Broadcast security solution has been selected to protect the pioneering DVB-H trials of South African broadcasting companies MultiChoice and M-Net.

PCCW mobile announced expanded partnerships with leading television sports providers to supply major sports content to PCCW mobile - a further major step in PCCW's strategy to extend its now TV programming to its mobile phone network.

PCCW mobile announced it has become the world's first mobile provider to broadcast real-time TV over its 3G network, using Cell Multimedia Broadcast technology.

The service was demonstrated by PCCW Executive Director Alex Arena at a keynote address at the 2006 Broadband World Forum Asia, being held in Hong Kong.