Mobile TV: I Still Don't Get It

I do understand that carriers, including wireless carriers, don't want to be carriers anymore, or at least not exclusively. They don't want to be "big, dumb pipes"; they want to be purveyors of content. Content is indeed king; it's why we need the big, dumb pipe in the first place. Content is worth more than the act of simply taking a bit in Location A and making it appear in Location B - classic value-add. Carriers, if the regulators let them, then, could be our suppliers of music, movies, news, banking, insurance, security services (as in, I've fallen and I can't get up), and anything else that's amenable to digital delivery. Apple is pursuing a similar strategy from the device side with its wildly-successful iTunes, so who can blame the carriers for wanting in on this?

But they still, nonetheless, have the obligation to provide the big, dumb pipe. All of this other potential activity detracts from their doing a good job in what should be their primary mission, and more importantly puts them in competition with their customers - people who, for example, sell banking, insurance, and entertainment services, and who will send a truck over if you do fall and can't get up. As I've noted before, the lack of network neutrality as a key pillar of communications policy (as a nation, we're weak overall in policy, come to think of it - $5 gas, anyone?) opens the door to adventurism that could put fundamental communications services - as measured by availability, reliability, throughput, and capacity, among other possible metrics) at risk. And, speaking of policy, do we really want carriers deciding what they should be doing with spectrum - that vital commodity that still belongs to we, the people? Fundamental policy errors have placed the interests of the US Treasury ahead of those of us who pay the bills. The entire situation borders on nauseating. Good thing the common result of that can't happen digitally.

Case in point - mobile TV. Lemme get this straight. The idea here is to provide what is essentially some number of channels of broadcast TV on our mobile handsets and related devices. I have never understood why this is a good idea, or how anyone will make money with this incredibly poor use of the public airwaves. Are users really going to whip out their handset at 9:00 to watch American Idol? OK, some will, but I've contended for some time that what users want while mobile is the same capabilities they have at the office or in the home, be that a desktop-quality browser or the services of a DVR. Without the latter, TV is most certainly unwatchable today, unless you like 1/3 of the experience being consumed by frequent commercials.

And yet the carriers capping mobile data capacity and refusing to commit to minimum bandwidth send a subtle signal - forget watching your Slingbox on your cell phone; buy your video from us. We know what you want to watch. Really. Trust us. It's just a few bucks a more a month, and those commercials may inform you of something you never knew about but really, really need. How swell.

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to use the spectrum being devoted to mobile TV to instead deploy lots more good old IP broadband, and let users decide for themselves what they want to do with it?