46 According to ITU, the Geneva, Switzerlandbased association of international telecommunication, by the end of this year mobile-broadband penetration will reach 84 percent in developed countries and 21 percent in developing countries, representing 2.3 billion users globally. Considering that 5G (or fifth-generation) wireless technology is expected to be a commercial reality in 2020, the entertainment industry has six years to figure out how to make small-screen TV appealing instead of appalling. The deployment date is due more to regulatory issues than technological ones, since international discussions about 5G spectrum (bands from 6 GHz to 100 GHz) are scheduled no earlier than 2018. In addition, telcos around the world are just starting to deploy 4G and they want time to recover their investments. The 5G technology reduces interferences, increases speeds in the order of 10 Gbps and offers more capacity to stream videos over smartphones. It also allows users to download content instantly. Meanwhile, Finland-based Nokia Networks is pioneering the technology needed to use LTE (4G global mobile phone standard) for nationwide TV broadcasting. The company is working on the first field trial of wide-area TV broadcasting using a single LTE frequency within the UHF spectrum. In a Single Frequency Network all stations use the same frequency to transmit TV content, thereby maximizing the number of simultaneous TV channels broadcast over a large area. LTE Broadcast technology allows operators to broadcast TV over existing mobile broadband infrastructure. Users would be able to watch TV on their cell phones without eating into their mobile data plan and independent of network load. LTE Broadcast allows for a FTA or pay-TV service that can be received by a means similar to traditional TV broadcasting. While anxiously awaiting the international entertainment industry’s business model proposals to leverage 5G technology, let’s review an article written byVideoAge’s editor Dom Serafini last June for an Italian publication, recalling the cell phone “devolution” as a form of voice communication (the famous cry: “Can you hear me now?”) and its “evolution” for video display. We know that nowadays the cellular (a.k.a. mobile) phone is better suited to display text and images than it is toprovide voice communications. In a readily available consumer market, cellular technology has reached the 3G and 4G levels, but all eyes are on the 5G technology, which allows content to be downloaded instantly. Phone viewing is preferred by music and sports fans. Music video viewing on a small device is understandable, but not for sports. For example, those who went to London last July to attend Wimbledon but were only able towatch the tennis matches on a large-screen TV at a pub can attest to the difficulty of following the ball’s trajectory. But let’s review the “devolution” of the cellular phone. We wonder why, with the evolution of technology and the dynamism of the modern era — that should compel people to have in their pockets everything necessary to attend to the day’s chores — we’re going back to the era when “portability” was only a futuristic dream? Cellular phone technology was introduced in 1973, but it was only in 1984 that cell phone devices started to be marketed. At that time, mobile devices were nicknamed “bricks” both for their size and weight. It took five years to make cell phones a little bit more portable, even though they were always handy gadgets to keep in the car (but impossible to carry around). The battery alone of the then-popular Motorola Micro TAC cell phone weighed nearly half a kilo. From 1992 to 2007 the race was to make mobile phones smaller and smaller. In those days, if someone walked into an exclusive New York City restaurant holding to the ear a “miniaturized” cell phone (measuring 59 mm in width, 160 mm in length and 35 mm thick, such as the Motorola Personal), the person would be assured a table even without a reservation. The miniaturization guaranteed an envious “status symbol,” which reached its peak in 2007 with the Modu Mobile (measuring 72 x 37 x 7.8 mm and weighing 40 grams). That same year, Apple’s Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, based on the concept of the smartphone popularized in 1999 by Blackberry’s RIM 850 with its very portable size of 64 x 89 x 24 mm. But from 2007 on, with the popularization of smartphones, cell phones have become more and more cumbersome, until we reach 2013 with Sony’s Z Ultra: a device that is very light but even larger than the Motorola Micro TAC cell phone, which measured “only” 125 x 53 x 24 mm. Today, if someone goes to a popular restaurant in New York City or Los Angeles without having a “tablet” the size of a bathroom mirror, clearly visible on hand, the person is guaranteed a wait of at least 45 minutes, even with a reservation! And to make matters even worse, young people are ashamed to be seen with parents who still use cellular “flip” models that tend to be convenient, small and have all the functions required for communicating via voice or SMS. Like social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), cell phones are also driven by entertainment, and with the realization that, with miniaturized cell phones, television was only a distant vision, companies began developing larger screens and using the term “cell phone” as an excuse to classify them as “portable.” Now with Apple’s iPhone 6 sporting a 5.5-inch screen and Samsung’s Galaxy Alpha with a 4.7inch display, voice is secondary to the video possibility. Plus, a sharper screen (a 2K resolution in Samsung’s case) to replace the Retina display (Apple’s screen with high pixel density) will enhance the video experience. Researchers have indicated that people who own 5-inch smartphones stream video more often than those who use 4-inch displays. The question that the television industry has to figure out in the next six years is whether the smartphone will be relegated to a “second screen” (i.e., the use of an additional monitor while watching TV) to interact with the program being watched, or if the second screen status will be confined to tablets, while the smartphone could indeed become the first screen for multiple genres. While the TV industry is figuring out how to leverage 5G, smartphone manufacturers are taking the matter into their own hands by directly negotiating rights with producers and distributors in order to market devices with hundreds of movies already embedded into the smartphones’ memories, and to produce them with easy download and streaming capacity. Show Biz Has a Few Years to Change SmallScreen TV FromAppalling to Appealing The Evolution of Cell Phones To Impact Television Dramatically October 2014 Looking Beyond the Future of TV First-generation smartphone Fifth-generation smartphone
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