Aloha Partners announced a new subsidiary called Hiwire that will join several other US firms looking to provide live broadcast TV to mobile phones. Hiwire will compete most directly with Qualcomm's MediaFLO and Crown Castle's Modeo. All three companies are building nationwide networks exclusively for mobile TV.
Hiwire will use 700MHz spectrum (TV channels 54 and 59) and use the DVB-H standard. The company already owns licenses that cover 60% of the US, 84% in the nation's top 40 markets. The network should cost $500 million to deploy and will launch in Las Vegas later this year. A time table for further markets was not announced.