SOUTH KOREANS FREAK OUT FROM NOT WATCHING SUBWAY TV, WOULD AMERICA GET TO THIS POINT?

South Koreans have long enjoyed the privilege of watching TV on their cellphones, however, their cellular operators have recently announced that they are thinking about cancelling subway TV coverage. This decision is being discussed because of declining ad revenue and huge debt from the service, which was provided at no additional cost to subscribers. For South Koreans, watching tv on the subway has become a familiar part of their routines ever since 2005, when phone companies launched mobile TV that could be tuned in on phones just about everywhere, including the subway tunnels in Seoul and other cities. The 10 million users of this service have begun to complain. According to the phone providers, the best solution would be for the government to subsidize the service, otherwise they might drop it altogether.

This still seems as a matter of science fiction in America where people still struggle with dead zones and wimax reception (oh boy, dont we know about this Nokia N810 users?). However, CBS just released an application for its tv.com site that would allow iPhones to play full episodes of its series using cellular networks. So, America its on the way of providing the necessary tools for people to watch TV using cellular networks. But, should people be charged an extra fee? or should companies offer it as a complementary service? If companies start charging there might not be too many people interested in the service (something very likely with the actual economy), but if carriers decide to implement the service and people start actually using it, it would be almost impossible to cut it off.


What would happen?? We'll have to wait and see. This just makes me wonder if I'll ever be upset by not being able to watch tv on the t...



Here are my sources:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/cbs-beams-star-trek-episodes-to-iphones/


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-cellphone-tv27-2009feb27,0,6155826.story