AT&T plans to use spectrum it acquired from Qualcomm to deliver LTE-based video to mobile devices.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed the plans today when speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference. LTE-Broadcast is a one-way multicast network technology that is similar to what’s used by television. It uses LTE cell sites to broadcast the content, which can be received by any LTE-capable smart device. LTE-Broadcast is part of the LTE spec, and doesn’t require a special antenna or other pricey hardware components. AT&T would be able to control what type of content is delivered in a given region, meaning it can offer local content as well as national content if it wants to.
AT&T didn’t say when it planned to launch this new video service, though Stephenson implied it is several years out.
AT&T will deploy the LTE-Broadcast network on the MediaFLO spectrum it bought from Qualcomm. Qualcomm operated the MediaFLO mobile video service for several years beginning in 2007, but eventually shut it down due to poor uptake of the service
