20 July 2007

EU Backs Nokia-Based Standard For Mobile TV

Nokia scored a win Wednesday over U.S. rival Qualcomm, as the European Union officially selected DVB-H standard as the single standard for mobile television delivered to cell phones and other portable devices.

The EU says that establishing a single standard will help the fledgling technology get off the ground, just in time for the 2008 Olympics and European football championships. The choice over Qualcomm's MediaFLO was largely expected by industry watchers.

Telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding has called on member states to roll out services using the DVB-H standard "as quickly as possible". Some key players have questioned why Brussels rather than the market is deciding what the standard should be. And analysts warn it could see the UK fall behind unless regulatory issues are ironed out.

Mobile TV services, which allow news, sports and other programmes to be broadcast directly to handsets, have begun rolling out around the world.

The European Union is keen to make sure the region remains competitive in a market it believes could be worth 20bn euros (£13.5bn) by 2011.

Ms Reding has decided to come down in favour of a single standard despite hoping the decision would be made by industry.

"We can either take the lead globally - as we did for mobile telephony based on the GSM standard developed by the European industry - or allow other regions to take the lion's share of the promised mobile TV market," she said.

"Wait-and-see is not an option. The time has come for Europe's industry and governments to switch on to mobile TV."

Made compulsory?

Ms Reding warned at the beginning of the year that Europe risked losing a chance to be a global player in the burgeoning mobile TV market.

DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds) has been identified by the EU as "the strongest contender for future mobile TV".

It was developed with almost 40m euros ($53m, £27m) of EC research cash and has so far been trialled or rolled out in eighteen European countries.

The use of the DVB-H standard will be "legally encouraged" among all 27 member states with the view to mandating use, if necessary, next year, said Ms Reding.

The decision is seen as a way of speeding up the rollout of services, which the EC believes could reach some 500 million customers worldwide by 2011.

Radio spectrum

While South Korea, the world's most advanced market for mobile TV, has 10% of the population using TV-enabled handsets, in Italy, the EU's most advanced market, less than 1% have them.

Ms Reding identified 2008, with important sporting events such as the European Football Championship and the summer Olympics, as a crucial year for mobile TV take-up.

There are currently around seven standards for mobile TV. DMB is widely used in South Korea, while Qualcomm in the US is relying on the MediaFLO standard that it developed itself. In the UK, Virgin Mobile is already offering TV services based on DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), a technology more usually associated with digital radio.

David McQueen, principal analyst with research firm Informa, is not surprised that the EU has come down in favour of DVB-H.

"It is the most open standard and there are more players in the market. Finland has networks already and in France there is a satellite hybrid solution," he said.

But for the UK the decision to plump for DVB-H could be problematic because it relies on freeing up parts of the radio spectrum.

The UHF band, which is identified by the EC as the most suitable spectrum for multimedia mobile services, is unlikely to be freed up in the UK until digital switch-over is complete in 2012.

"Most European countries are moving towards allocating spectrum but one anomaly is the UK," said Mr McQueen.

Mike Short, vice-president of research and development at O2, believes the move to back DVB-H could be premature.

"It is a bit like advocating one particular currency to be used across Europe when not everyone has it," he said.