Does the Open Mobile Video Coalition know something about mobile TV others don’t? While both Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and MediaFlo have recently acknowledged that mobile TV hasn’t picked up the traction they’d expected, the OMVC, an 800-strong coalition of local broadcasters announced at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas on Monday that they were losing no time with mobile TV, and hoped to choose a standard by February 2009, the same time they are required to make the switch from analog TV to digital. This would allow them them to launch broadcast digital TV to mobile devices as early as late 2009, to open up the local mobile ad TV market which they claim is worth $2 billion, reports AP.

The broadcasters certainly need to find alternative ad platforms. The Television Bureau of Advertising says that ad revenue at the US’s largest stations has slid 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. With stations competing with online and cable, revenues are expected to sink even further. Mobile TV gives them a third stream in addition to regular TV and online. Moreover, the broadcasters won’t have to invest all that much. The coalition puts the cost of upgrading each TV station to allow it to broadcast to mobile devices at $100,000 at the most, with handset upgrades at around $10.

The stations are currently examining MPH (Mobile-Pedestrian-Handheld) created by LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) and Harris Corp.; Samsung and Rohde & Schwarz’s A-VSB system ; and a third standard developed by Thomson (NYSE: TOC) and Micronas.

But standing in the way of their plans are, of course, the operators. The service that the local stations would offer would bypass the networks, which have already begun offering their own subscription television services. First, will operators want a competing TV service next to their own on handsets they subsidize? Second, local broadcasters’ services will be ad-sponsored, or free for the viewer. How will this sit next to an operator’s paid-for service? Verizon (NYSE: VZ), for example, charges a minimum of $15 to access its mobile TV service.

But other players like Qualcomm’s MediaFlo, which powers Verizon’s TV service, say they believe that the coalition isn’t competing with them, and in fact, anything that boosts the usage of mobile TV, is good for the entire industry. MediaFlo has said it would have no problem putting the OMVC’s forthcoming standard onto their chips. Samsung has been arguing for some time now that MediaFlo-type services should be thought of as “cable,” while A-VSB services should be thought of as the local channels on a regular TV, and that this hybrid model, which works in the living room, could work easily on the mobile phone. Of course, with the admissions from Nokia and MediaFlo that mobile TV isn’t taking off as expected, squabbling over revenue models may be a moot point with time better spent on how to increase usage.

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