RIGA - Latvian Mobile Telephone last week launched a new mobile television service that will allow users to view special TV programs in cell phones. LMT is offering the new service 's the first of its kind in Latvia 's in cooperation with Latvia's LNT and TV5 television channels, as well as the "TV Net" Internet portal.
The mobile TV services will be provided by using both UMTS and EDGE data transmission technologies, LMT spokesman Davids Dane explained.
Director Guntars Traubergs told journalists that the Internet television service that LNT has been providing for more than five years has been used by at least 200,000 people throughout the country, and that he expects that the mobile TV service would draw more than 10,000 clients.
Evita Matisone, an official with Tele2, LMT's competitor, said the company could not provide mobile TV services for the time being, since its third generation UMTS mobile network would only be launched at the end of the year. She did not say whether Tele2 will start providing mobile TV services.
Lithuania's Bite GSM mobile operator, who won the tender for the third GSM/UMTS mobile telecommunications license in Latvia and is intending to launch operations by the end of this year, is also planning to offer mobile TV services in the future, said Bite GSM CEO Jesper Theill Eriksen. He could not say, though, when this will happen, pointing out that all the services to be offered by Bite GSM, will be launched when "the market is ready for them."
In Lithuania, Bite GSM clients already can download and watch the news programs of LNK television on their mobile phones.
Mobile television, which allows users to watch various programs with the help of third generation mobile technologies, has become increasingly popular in several European countries. Mobile television services are already provided by mobile operators in Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Italy, the U.S.A. and elsewhere.
