Privately held Aloha Partners, which owns a huge chunk of 700 MHz spectrum, will be competing head-to-head with the likes of MediaFLO and Modeo in offering mobile TV services to carriers with a new subsidiary called Hiwire. Aloha Partners has been buying up fellow 700 MHz licensees and vigorously testing a variety of high-speed data technologies. The company has been weighing its options about what its business plan might be, looking at the idea of becoming an MVNO-type company for public safety, which is in dire need of high-speed data applications, or targeting the mobile TV market since its spectrum is ideal for TV broadcasts.
Aloha Partners is the nation's largest 700 MHz spectrum holder with an average of 12 megahertz of spectrum covering 60 percent of the U.S., including holdings in the top 10 markets and 84 percent of the population in the top 40 markets. Satellite operator SES Global is expected to announce a technical and marketing alliance with Aloha Partners to demonstrate the business case for beaming digital music and high-end video to mobile devices. An interesting development given the fact that Qualcomm's MediaFLO has just one committed customer, Verizon Wireless, which hasn't announced any time lines for service and Modeo, which hasn't announced any partners or content deals.
To read more about Aloha's Hiwire subsidiary:
- take a look at this article from RCR Wireless News (sub. req.)
For more about the anticipated announcement from SES Global and Aloha:
- read this report from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)