Verizon Wireless to Take Super Bowl XLVI Airborne

Carrier offers NBC simulcast on iPhone and select Android phones

By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/2/2012 4:19:24 PM

For the first time, the National Football League's title game will be streamed live to mobile devices, with Verizon Wireless exclusively offering the telecast of the New York Giants taking on the New England Patriots to subscribers with select smartphones.

NBC's Feb. 5 Super Bowl telecast live from Indianapolis will be transcoded and delivered at variable bit rates to eligible Verizon Wireless customers via the NFL Mobile app.

MobiTV, a mobile-video services provider, is handling the back-end transcoding and delivery for the Super Bowl transmission on behalf of Verizon Wireless, as it has done for regular-season games the last two NFL seasons. The Emeryville, Calif.-based company has boosted capacity to be able to handle "hundreds of thousands" of concurrent viewers, MobiTV chief marketing officer Ray DeRenzo said.

"We've had to certify our platform to a very, very high concurrent level," DeRenzo said, declining to be more specific. "Verizon has been incredibly on-point to make sure this is a very, very compelling user experience."

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