By Terry Maxon

The Dallas Morning News

For a handful of viewers, the World Cup this month will be played out not in huge stadiums but on the tiny screens of their cell phones.

Texas Instruments Inc. and some partners will broadcast live soccer games to mobile phones in a demonstration in New York and Munich, Germany.

Their hope: The high quality digital broadcasts will stir up more interest in mobile television, particularly for handsets that use chips made by TI.

“The advantage is having it in your purse or pocket and being able to see it anywhere,” TI spokeswoman Gail Chandler said.

“Once people see it, I think there will be a tremendous amount of interest.”

Ready or not, many wireless phone users worldwide will get the opportunity in the next few years to buy television service on mobile phones.

Companies are investing billions of dollars in networks, programming and phone technology for the prospect of many more billions in profits.

In Italy and Germany, operators are rolling out mobile TV networks in time for the World Cup, which started with matches in Munich and Gelsenkirchen and will offer games in a dozen German cities before the July 9 final in Berlin.

Mobile video trials have been under way elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

Qualcomm Corp., which offers a technology standard different from the one TI has embraced, showed off its TV channels in April as the wireless industry gathered in Las Vegas for its annual convention.

A competitor is starting its own digital video system in the same city.

But the tremendous interest and investment in mobile video are accompanied by uncertainty about what consumers want and will pay for. Among the unknowns:

• Should the video signal be transmitted on a separate network or through a cellular phone company’s network?

• Do consumers want to download clips on demand or watch live TV?

• Will they watch the same content they see on full-size TVs from networks and cable companies, or will it have to be specially made for little screens?

Wireless industry consultant Andrew Seybold said companies probably will find out what works only by finding out what doesn’t.

“There is no market research for what’s going forward,” he said. “So what we’re going to do is we’re going to put stuff in the market. We’re going to see who buys it. We’re going to see who uses it.”

After that, “we’re going to refine it,” he said.

“We’re going to put it out in the market place in a different form. That’s the way this industry is going to evolve. That’s the way it’s always evolved.”

A good way to start an argument among mobile TV adherents is to ask a very basic question: How will the signal get to the mobile phone?

Many users can already get video on their mobile phones through programming carried by their cellular phone companies.

Verizon Wireless offers VCast, Sprint has Sprint TV, and Cingular recently began its Cingular Video service.

Consulting company Telephia estimated last month that more than 2 million people have subscribed to mobile video in the United States.

Of particular interest to the industry, the average mobile TV subscriber spends $40 more on wireless services than cell phone users who don’t subscribe to mobile TV services.

The advent of third-generation (or 3G) phone networks has sped the growth of mobile video.

With downloads possible at 400,000 to 700,000 bits per second, the cellular networks are now able to offer video close to what viewers can see on their televisions.

But some in the industry are saying video that goes through the cellular companies’ networks will rob too much capacity from their networks at too little profit for the phone companies.

DVB-H, MediaFLO and other technologies don’t go through the cell networks.

Instead, they would use separate antennae in metro areas to beam TV signals directly to chips inside cell phones.

Aloha Partners, which owns a lot of broadcast spectrum through much of the United States, in late April created subsidiary Hiwire to build a DVB-H digital network in Las Vegas, offering several dozen channels of live TV, music, data and other services.

Aloha plans to expand it to other markets if the test succeeds.

Scott Wills, Hiwire’s president and chief operating officer, said a separate network for mobile TV is a far cheaper and better way to deliver video than trying to through a cellular phone network.

He estimated a cellular company could earn $20.47 per megabit (million bits of information) by sending little multimedia messages at 20 cents each.

Those messages involved less than 10,000 bits of data.

But a 30-minute high-definition video, if sold at the same $1.99 price Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes store charges, would require nearly a half billion bits to send and earn the phone company virtually nothing.

That hi-def video would take up the same network capacity as more than 1 million one-minute voice calls.

Some argue cellular networks should be used for less demanding services such as voice and messaging, and separate networks for TV signals, Wills said.