BT has announced a major extension of its mobile video service trial with Newmediacom to provide live video streaming of CNBC Europe news to mobile handsets in 17 European countries. The service is based on BT's Fastnets videostreaming technology and Content Management Platform, and can be accessed from a range of mobile devices. Customers will view live broadcasts from CNBC Europe, registering for the service online and paying using credit or debit cards for daily or monthly access.

BT's move comes as the commercialisation of digital cellphone tv and mobile videostreaming services is starting to pick up some serious speed. During the course of this year such services have been planned or launched in markets as diverse as Chile (by Telefónica Móvil), China (China Unicom), and the USA (Sprint). Content provider Turner Broadcasting System Inc has been particularly busy. Following February's signing of an agreement with mobilkom austria for the operator to stream the CNN International news channel to mobile users, the media group cut similar deals with Telstra in Australia, Sonera in Finland, Vodafone in the Netherlands and one of Sweden's mobile operators. In July it launched its Cartoon Network channel on 3's UTMS videophones in Italy.

Meantime, in mid-June, in what was claimed to be a first for the Asia-Pacific region, Singaporean mobile operator MobileOne, Nokia, MediaCorp Technologies, and the Media Development Authority of Singapore jointly showcased a live end-to-end mobile phone TV broadcast. This was carried over a digital video broadcast-handheld (DVB-H) network at a Nokia Connection event in Singapore.

The appeal of digital mobile phone TV to service and content providers isn't difficult to appreciate. Broadcast is a medium and a format already more familiar to consumers than wireless telephony and, if the obvious limitations of the terminal can be overcome or minimised, there's major commercial potential for the delivery of news, information and entertainment.

Unsurprisingly, the use of different mainstream digital broadcasting standards in different regions of the world is mirrored by the existence of different proposals for standards to support digital TV for mobile phones.

Japanese mobile phone and component vendors, for example, are pushing the terrestrial integrated services digital broadcasting (ISDB-T) standard. National broadcasting using this segmented coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (COFDM) technique began in late 2003, and prototype ISDB-T terminals are appearing.

Supporters of DVB-H, which is a development of the European DVB-terrestrial (DVB-T) COFDM standard, claim it combines traditional television broadcast standards with elements specific to handheld devices such as: mobility, smaller screens and antennas, indoor coverage, and battery power economy. DVB-H trials have been set up in Berlin, Helsinki and Pittsburgh, and reports suggest that, subject to Australian Broadcasting Authority approval, a further trial could be mounted in Sydney by the year's end.

Proponents of the American 8-level vestigial sideband (8-VSB) digital TV standard appear somewhat more circumspect about its possible remit in the mobile arena, although portability is certainly in the prospectus of the recent enhanced-VSB (E-VSB) initiative. In July, South Korea's LG Electronics announced its technology had been adopted as the basis of the Advanced Television Systems Committee's (ATSC's) E-VSB standard. LG said it would develop E-VSB chips by the end of 2005 and commercialise them in 2006.

Meanwhile, on the mobile network TV front, one assumption has been that 3G would be the required wireless network technology to carry mobile phone streaming and broadcast content. However, BT's Fastnets can run on the general packet radio service (GPRS), as can emerging solutions from other vendors.
John Williamson