• NY Times, Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:30 AM

South Korea may point to the future of mobile phone usage in the U.S. Since January, some cell phone users have had the ability to watch television on their phones--for free--through a government-subsidized technology called Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, or DMB. Seoul, the nation's capital, is the first city to make mobile TV available around the clock and for free. Only those with the more expensive DMB-enabled phones can receive the free TV service. So far, consumers report that the images are relatively free of "jerky motion," but certain sports, like soccer, could be difficult to see on the small screens. The technology is not perfect--image quality is affected by motion and the picture disappears altogether when reception is bad. More than two million Koreans are expected to use mobile TV this year, with the number expected to grow to nearly 15 million, or 30 percent of the population by 2010.

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