BBC iPlayer coming to Nokia N96

The BBC iPlayer will be available to owners of Nokia's latest N96 smartphone from 1st October. The Nokia N96 is the second mobile phone to receive iPlayer support, with the first being the Apple iPhone. The Nokia N96 provides a couple of important improvements compared to the service provided on the iPhone, though, which only allows users to stream iPlayer programmes via Wi-Fi (I believe the iPhone 3G is still only able to access programmes via Wi-Fi). The Nokia N96, however, allows users to stream via 3G/mobile broadband or Wi-Fi, and TV programmes will be downloadable.

Downloading offers a couple of advantages over streaming for mobile phones. Firstly, iPlayer programme files that are downloaded via Wi-Fi will help to avoid having to download programmes via mobile broadband, so they won't count towards a user's monthly download allowance on mobile broadband. And secondly, downloading avoids the issue with streams buffering, which is a distinct possibility with mobile broadband coverage being incomplete, and where coverage exists the capacity often isn't very high, and a lot of people would experience difficulties trying to sustain the 500 kbps connection that's needed for iPlayer TV streams when mobile.

The advantages downloading currently has over streaming will diminish over time, though, because the network operators are bound to improve the mobile broadband coverage over time considering how successful it's been over the last year or so since it became far better value for money — Ofcom recently said that 500,000 USB dongles for mobile broadband had been sold between February and June this year. There are also a number of new technologies in the pipeline for mobile broadband that are far faster than the present HSDPA standard that's presently used, and as well as being far faster they're also far more spectrum efficient and cost efficient for the mobile network operators, so mobile broadband should become better value-for-money as well.

Radio programmes can't be downloaded yet, although radio streams will be a lot more robust than TV streams because they use much lower bit rate levels (typically 128 kbps as opposed to 500 kbps), so it's a lot easier to sustain that bit rate level over the mobile channel. The BBC is now apparently looking into providing radio downloads, but it will still be some time before we could see radio downloads, because the BBC hasn't applied to the BBC Trust for permission to provide them yet, and that process alone takes a number of months to complete.

No technical information was given about what video and audio formats or bit rate levels would be used for the streams or downloads for the service on the Nokia N96, but it's a good bet that the downloads will be protected by DRM.

Why no general Symbian S60 application?

"I have always wanted to take BBC iPlayer to mobile but we have been waiting for devices to arrive which mean we can create the kind of experience that audiences have come to expect from the service."

"The Nokia N96 was always gong to be a contender, as we knew it would be optimised for video and audio."

"It proved to be the first platform where we could fully realise the ambition that we had for mobile iPlayer."

Personally, I think it would have been better if the BBC had developed a general application that can be run on a wide range of existing smartphones running the Symbian S60 operating system, as that would enable a large number of people to gain access to the iPlayer on their mobiles. And at the very least I think the Nokia N95, which already has a large user-base, would have been a better device to provide iPlayer support on rather than the N96, which has only just come out, so very few people already own one.

BBC iPlayer coming to Nokia N96

Why no general Symbian S60 application?

Add a comment: