Who's paying for Mobile TV?

Verizon Wireless have chosen the huge CES show in LA to finally launch their broadcast mobile TV service - V CAST - with MediaFLO. However despite an impressive line up of partners, including CBS, NBC, MTV and Fox they seem remarkably reticent to talk about what users will pay for the service.

The reality is probably that users will reflect the findings of the Total Telecom Mobile TV Survey (Sept 2006) that found the majority of potential users of mobile TV would be unwilling to pay for the service, so maybe Verizon are hoping ads will provide the underlying revenue stream for the service?

Ultimately though this is likely to be a long game. Damian Blackden of UniversalMcCann is quoted in Revolution magazine this month as saying the mobile market won't even start to get interesting until 2008 when there are a decent number of high-end handsets in circulation.