In Asia and much of the rest of the world, television has been available in streaming format to cell phones for some time.

In Europe and the U.S., however, it’s been a long time coming as networks claim it will overload their systems and as competing network standards have made it difficult to employ. Limited offerings from carriers such as Verizon and AT&T have had dubious popularity amongst users, but new technology and movements in the market are changing that.

Test trials are already underway in some areas of North America as providers work out the final details of the service offerings. In South Korea, says Samsung’s Hankil Yoon, “Our experience shows that people like watching TV on mobile phones, even on smaller screens. And they like watching it for free. It is only a matter of time before it goes global.”

Samsung already includes mobile-TV chips in its smart phones for the Asian markets is making a handset for Sprint in the United States. The free-to-air mobile TV availability in South Korea has been out for over five years and now about 56% of the country’s population watches it regularly from mobile devices. An additional 80 million people in China, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and Latin America all watch mobile TV as well.

Earlier this year, Sprint and nine broadcasters in the Washington-Baltimore area began a four-month trial of mobile TV for various Samsung, LG, and Dell devices including netbooks, mobile phones and portable DVD players.

If that trial is successful, the devices may begin to go national by the end of the year.

The 2008 Olympic Games is now officially the most watched television event in history.

“It’s been a cultural phenomenon,” said Alan Wurrtzel, president, research and media development of NBC Universal. “I can’t think of another instance where the country so universally gets behind an event and shares it like they have with Beijing, not with the widespread fragmentation we see today.”

Media buyers get a big surprise… NBC’s national prime-time ratings were through the roof. They exceeded the guaranteed ratings of 14.5 media experts were expecting by 10 percent. And it hasn’t stopped there. Even after the Games began on August 8, NBC was able to secure an additional $30 million in ad revenue, according to NBC Olympic President Gary Zenkel.

Internet as part of strategy. In addition to the television coverage, NBC included the Internet as part of its overall marketing strategy. The plan was to stream 2,200 hours of live footage on NBCOlymics.com. NBC Reports state the site received 46.2 million hits from unique users and represented eight million hours of online video viewing.

From a business standpoint, the NBC network and NBCOlympics.com achieved Olympic success.