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NewsGlobe: Today's News
EU’s Reding backs DVB-H
Proposal for single European mobile TV standard sparks heated debate
by Ken Wieland
Viviane Reding, telecoms commissioner for the European
Union (EU), has called for a single mobile TV standard—DVB-H—to be rolled out across Europe.
In a speech sure to raise the ire of rival mobile TV standard
camps, Reding called upon EU member states to "encourage
the implementation of DVB-H in their territory" and to make
available UHF spectrum for that purpose "as quickly as
possible."
The EC (European Commission), says Reding, will monitor the
progress made be EU member states in implementing DVB-H.
She says the EC may come up with proposals in mid-2008
that will include, if necessary, "steps to make an open
standard [DVB-H] mandatory."
Reding had already hinted earlier this year—at the CeBIT
technology fair in Hanover, Germany—that she would support
the DVB-H standard in Europe (see
Who wants mobile TV?) if she didn’t see adequate mobile TV
progress being made. Her argument is that Europe will reap
the economies of scale of a single mobile TV standard in
much the same way it has benefited from having a single 2G
mobile standard: GSM.
According to estimates quoted by Reding in her CeBIT
speech, around 200 million Europeans could be viewing TV on
a handheld terminal by 2015 and the market could be worth
up to €20 bn (US$28 bn).
What about market forces?
Given that DVB-H is backed by European company Nokia, US-
based Qualcomm might feel that Reding's position is a
political one (although it has not explicitly said so).
However, Qualcomm’s own proprietary mobile TV standard,
MediaFLO, has been tested in Europe (including with satellite
broadcaster BSkyB) and the US chipset maker argues that it’s
far more cost-efficient than DVB-H (see
(3GSM: Qualcomm claims mobile TV momentum). Reding’s support of DVB-H, argues
Qualcomm, could "stall the advancement of a healthy
European mobile TV eco-system."
Dr. Kamil Grajski, president of the FLO Forum, says: "We
support the principle of technology neutrality, which the major
European industry groups have been calling on the
Commission to respect. There is a reason why the principle of
technology neutrality exists and that is to ensure that the
market can choose which technology delivers the most
attractive solution for the consumer."
Rival standards
In addition to DVB-H and MediaFLO, there is a wide range of
mobile TV standards in the global marketplace. These include
S-DMB (satellite digital multimedia broadcast, developed
jointly in South Korea and Asia); ISDB-T (integrated service
digital broadcasting, developed in Japan); T-DMB (developed
jointly in South Korea and Germany); and a hybrid
terrestrial/satellite mobile TV developed by Alcatel that uses
the S-band (2.0GHz and 2.2GHz).
And in the UK, Virgin Mobile already has a mobile TV service
up and running using the DAB-IP (digital audio broadcast)
standard.
The UK market could be a difficult one to convert to DVB-H
anytime soon as the UHF spectrum (470-862MHz) that is
recommended for DVB-H is not scheduled to become
available until 2012. The EC says in member states where
UHF spectrum is not immediately available, the so-called L-
band (1452-1492MHz), which supports DAB, can be used. But
this, says the EC, is only a "fall-back solution."
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