LG Introduces Phone With Free TV

Is the next big thing free TV on your cell phone? It just might come about -- if Korean giant LG has anything to do with it.

According to a Reuters report, LG just introduced a handset that will allow you to watch new, over-the-air digital broadcast TV channels on your phone without having to pay your cell-phone company a monthly fee.

This new technology threatens to remove cellular-phone operators (AT&T(T Quote), Verizon(VZ Quote), Sprint(S Quote)) from what could become a very lucrative mobile TV business in the future.

The LG HB620T phone taps straight into existing TV broadcasts, which means that operators could lose out on broadcast revenue from services streamed over 3G and 4G networks or on dedicated mobile broadcasting platforms.

Newly designed phones use the digital television signal being broadcast for TV sets, known as DVB-T. This is a new standard facing an already fragmented mobile TV market. Nokia(NOK Quote) and other European interests (including the European Commission) are pushing DVB-H, while Asian and U.S. vendors have pushed technologies like DMB and Qualcomm's(QCOM Quote) MediaFLO.

Qualcomm describes its system as an "ecosystem with a highly scalable global and open mobile entertainment platform with the highest content capacity combined with a visually compelling mobile experience."

We caught up with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs on the floor of the CTIA cell phone show in Las Vegas last month, and asked him about his company's MediaFLO technology.

In the future, these other mobile TV platforms may be bypassed by consumers if other technologies will be able to provide us with digital television programming on our cell phones -- with no additional monthly subscription charges.