Do not use VLC on your phone for live TV (it crashes). Use Televizo (Android) or Smarters Player Lite (iOS/Android).

IPTV M3U (also known as M3U playlist) is a text file that contains a list of multimedia files, typically used for streaming live TV channels, movies, and other video content over the internet. M3U stands for "MP3 URL" and was originally used for audio playlists, but it's now widely used for video playlists as well.

The project is a massive, community-curated collection of publicly available, legal TV channels from around the world. They don't host any streams but provide a clean, well-organized database of free-to-air channels, typically those that broadcast over the air or are provided as free samples.