Context
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and India’s public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati are exploring the feasibility of a technology that allows broadcasting video and other forms of multimedia content directly to mobile phones, without needing an active internet connection.
What is D2M Technology?
- The technology is based on the convergence of broadband and broadcast, using which mobile phones can receive terrestrial digital TV.
- It would be similar to how people listen to FM radio on their phones, where a receiver within the phone can tap into radio frequencies.
- Using D2M, multimedia content can also be beamed to phones directly.
Possible Benefits of D2M
- It allows broadcasting video and other forms of multimedia content directly to mobile phones, without needing an active internet connection.
- The content should stream without any buffering whatsoever while not consuming any internet data.
- It promises to improve consumption of broadband and utilisation of spectrum.
- It can possibly be used to directly broadcast content related to citizen-centric information.
- It can be further used to counter fake news, issue emergency alerts and offer assistance in disaster management.
- It can be used to broadcast live news, sports etc. on mobile phones.
Impact
- For consumers, a technology like this would mean that they would be able to access multimedia content from Video on Demand (VoD) or Over the Top (OTT) content platforms.
- This will be without having to exhaust their mobile data, and more importantly, at a nominal rate.
- The technology will also allow people from rural areas, with limited or no internet access, to watch video content.
- For businesses, one of the key benefits of the technology is that it can enable telecom service providers to offload video traffic from their mobile network onto the broadcast network.
- It thus helps them to decongest valuable mobile spectrum.
- This will also improve usage of mobile spectrum and free up bandwidth which will help reduce call drops, increase data speeds etc.
