Data transmission during periods of low traffic

摘要

The invention relates to the transmission of steamed media data over 2.5G and 3G digital mobile phone networks. A digital mobile phone network infrastructure includes a plurality of radio base stations in communication with a plurality of mobile communications devices over a radio interface. The packetised streamed media data is buffered within the network infrastructure and this data is then sent to a mobile communications device when traffic across the network is low. Alternatively the mobile communications device may buffer data for transmission to the network. The data may be transmitted at a lower than ususal quality of service. Preferably the mobile communications device buffers the streamed data until reception is complete before the data stream is played to the user.