3 in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 offer a Mobile TV

Mobile TV

Mobile television usually means television watched on a small handheld device. It may be a pay TV service broadcast on mobile phone networks or received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations from either regular broadcast or a special mobile TV transmission format...

 service across most of their range of phones. It is provided by 3 and independent companies and offers the main genres of: Comedy, Entertainment, Music, Documentaries, Kids programming and user-submitted content. Whilst many of the channels take on the branding of regular channels (for example, MTV and Nickeleodeon), the content is actually a "loop" of programming that tends to be updated once a week, rather than the full content available through digital television or cable services.

Pricing

3 Mobile TV is available in 3 ways:

• By pay-per-day for 49p. This gives 24 hours of unlimited access to all channels.

• By buying a monthly add-on for £5. Open to Pay monthly (contract) customers only. This gives access to all channels for exactly 1 month.

• By buying a PAYG Mobile TV add-on for £2. This gives access to a restricted service of 4 channels: ITV1, Kiss, Geek TV and MTV Trax. This add-on is valid for exactly 1 month.

Channel listing

• Aardman Animations (exclusive, updated weekly)
• ITV1 (live, but due to legal issues, is unable to show advertisement breaks or certain programmes, mostly sports and films)
• FHM (updated weekly)
• MTV Trax (music videos, updated daily)
• MTV Snax (MTV non-music programming, updated weekly)
• Nickeleodeon (children's programming, updated weekly)
• Vidzone TV (music videos, exclusive, updated weekly)
• Paramount Comedy (updated weekly)
• Geek TV (comedy clips, cartoons and user-generated content, exclusive, updated weekly)
• National Geographic (updated weekly)
• Kerrang! (music videos, updated daily)
• Kiss (music videos)

Former channels

• Zone Reality
• Six Degrees Extreme Sports
• ITN
• ITV Play
• BBC1
• BBC3

The BBC channels were broadcast on 3 for a trial period, and are not currently available.

Issues

• All channels (except ITV1) must be re-connected to after 20 minutes to continue viewing.
• ITV1 must be re-connected to after 30 minutes to continue viewing.
• Most channels are updated weekly
• The only live channel is ITV1
• ITV 1 cannot show certain shows
• National Geographic shows merely clips of its programmes
• Currently offers no BBC channels
• A high ratio of music channels compared to other genres.

Related services

3 in the UK also offer a selection of "Free videos" or "Free to watch" content. These are funded by advertisements (Unlike mobile TV which has no commercial advertisements).
The main competitor is Sky Mobile TV, available on Vodafone UK

Vodafone

Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...

, o2 UK

O2 plc

Telefónica Europe plc is a European broadband and telecommunications company that trades as O2 . The company originated as a collection of worldwide telecommunications companies, known in the later half of the 1990s as BT Wireless, and a global mobile data business known then as Genie Internet,...

 and T-mobile UK

T-Mobile

T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...

. Also MobiTV

MobiTV

MobiTV, Inc. claims to be a leading provider of "end-to-end mobile media solutions". The MobiTV converged media platform delivers live TV, video on-demand and the ability to download and store content for offline viewing to millions of users on all major wireless networks and major mobile...

 was a former competitor offered on Virgin Mobile

Virgin Mobile

Virgin Mobile is a brand used by many mobile phone service providers across the globe; its headquarters are based in the United Kingdom. Virgin Mobile has local operations in Australia, Canada, France, India, South Africa, Greece, United Kingdom and the United States. It briefly also had operations...

, but has now ceased operations in Europe.

External links

• 3 Mobile TV official site