Prasar Bharati plans to bring TV channels to smartphones without internet, trials show promise: Report

India's public broadcaster Prasar Bharati is reportedly planning to bring live telecasts of the TV channels on smartphones without the internet.

According to a report by The New Indian Express, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has confirmed that the broadcasters have been conducting trials in several cities, in collaboration with IIT Kanpur and Saankhya Labs using high-power and low-power transmitters.

Saankhya Labs is a subsidiary of Tejas Networks. It is a wireless communication solutions provider based in Karnataka.

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Citing officials, the English daily said that so far the experiments for direct-to-mobile (D2M) technology have been successful. However, to take it further, transmitters on cellular towers and chips in phones are required.

Elaborating on the experiment, an official told TNE that the live broadcasting of TV channels on mobile phones is done using broadcast signals like radio. In this process, the devices will require specific hardware to receive and decode broadcast signals.

The technology will not hinder the quality of the video. It will enable high-quality streaming of both video and audio as it will not be dependent on internet speed.

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In 2019, the MIB signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for research collaboration in areas such as D2M broadcasting, rural broadband, convergence with 5G, etc,

Separately, Prasar Bharati is also planning to move into the OTT space. Last month Stgoryboard18 reported that the OTT platform will be operating on a revenue-sharing basis, with content providers receiving 65% of the net revenue from subscription or transaction-backed content, while Prasar Bharati will retain 35%. The same revenue-sharing model will apply to the satellite channels onboarded to the platform.