Mobitel announces special package for Media

Mobitel Announced ‘M3-Journalist’ a 3.5G service tailored to meet the stringent requirements of journalists from the electronic media.

The service was launched after extensive trials carried out with Independent Television Network of Sri Lanka (ITN). Mobitel having launched South Asia’s first and only HSPA powered Super 3.5G network in December 2007, dishes out yet another first using its third generation service under the name ‘M3-Journalist’ which potentially can empower M3 users to directly communicate through video telephony giving the ability to broadcast themselves live on Sri Lanka’s popular ITN television network initially.

The service was trailed commercially launched on Sunday by the Minister of Mass Media and Information Anura Priyadarshana Yapa on ITN’s Sinhala news at 7:00p.m. and English news at 9:45p.m. The Minister was interviewed live remotely from the news studio through M3 Journalist whereby a video call was directly dialed into the ITN studio from the ITN reporter’s M3 phone who conducted the interview with the Minister at the Minister’s residence.

The control room of ITN news studio scaled down the visual which was de-multiplexed from the video call and superimposed on the standard broadcast visual frame, finally shown as a ‘picture in picture configuration’ where the minister and the newscaster were both seen on TV on their interview.

Speaking on the ground breaking service ‘M3-Journalist’ the Minister of Mass Media and Information Hon. Anura Priyadarshana Yapa stated that “New technology needs to be incorporated to enhance the user experience of mass media in Sri Lanka.

ITN took pride in launching M3-Journalist which is a first in South Asia. “This was a breakthrough moment for ITN being the first Television Network in the region to incorporate 3rd Generation technology for news reporting” said Chairman of ITN, Anura Siriwardena.

“With the launch of M3, we have already unveiled two important services which deal with mass media” said Mobitel CEO, Suren J. Amarasekera. “While M3 offers Mobile TV service thus ensuring true mobility to the TV viewers, M3-Journalist will add the ‘broadcast-yourself’ aspect which is in the boom in the most developed countries.

We firmly believe that ‘social networking’ and ‘community driven’ services are fast entering the media evolution.”

ITN will actively involve the public in many TV programs in the days to come and the M3-Journalist Hot line numbers to be dialled will be announced by the respective TV programme hosts.