While 3G has been occupying the majority of non-iPhone mobile news, 2.5G handsets have been silently improving, with ROK's push to deliver TV services to the phones, Mobile Marketing Magazine reports. In addition to the existing ROK TV and FreeBe services currently available to 2.5G handsets in the UK, the US, Turkey, China, and Thailand, ROK has launched 'Monkey Sports News', a live sports news channel.
What's newsworthy about Monkey Sports News, however, is the way it's put together. ROK combined speech recognition software with a live text feed of sports news, creating a channel where the news is 'read' by CG animals. The technology is patent-pending, and uses mass-market 2.5G GPRS to stream video.