The cell phones began arriving in the first week of September. Slowly, people began finding reasons to stop by my office. They would come in, pick up whichever phone caught their attention, look at it, ask what it did ("It streams television"), hit a few buttons, and then leave.

Though mobile TV does, for the moment, suffer from technical limitations such as long buffering times and choppy streams, Sprint, Verizon, and Cingular have determined that the medium is now good enough to begin earning money for carriers. Most basic services -- which offer channels such as ABC News or E! -- cost roughly $10 to $15 per month, with pay-per-view clips sold for up to $4 and à la carte channels for upwards of $4 each.