Despite fierce EC backing of handheld standard, German operators go for DVB-T while Italians take MBMS pulse… 

Notwithstanding the rather unequivocal backing of the EC for the regional adoption of the Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) standard (click), some European operators are testing the mobile TV market waters using other technologies. Germany ’s largest operators T-Mobile and Vodafone will be promoting the free-to-air Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestrial (DVB-T) system on new handsets being released in time for the Euro 2008 football championship in June. And in Italy Telecom Italia, Qualcomm and Huawei have announced the completion of what is billed as Europe 's first Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) field trial.

Telegent Systems, a CMOS semiconductor company providing single-chip solutions for both free-to-air and pay-per-view mobile TV in mobile handsets, has some thoughts on the German breaking of the DVB-H ranks.

“Companies need to use free-to-air mobile TV as a driver to create demand for mobile television in general. Telegent’s view is that the two key drivers for consumer adoption are that, one, the content that consumers want to watch on their handsets is the same familiar content that they view on their television sets at home and, two,  they want to be able to access this content on their handset for free,” says ceo Weijie Yun. “Adoption slows down when consumers are faced with service fees for receiving unfamiliar content coupled with limited coverage. While infrastructure and pricing models are still being developed for DVB-H, free-to-air broadcasting has a strong part to play and will help build and prepare a mobile TV audience who will then be more willing to accept a paid-for service for premium content.”

Over in Italy Telecom Italia, admittedly already a DVB-H pioneer, has just finished its trial of MBMS using a Huawei platform and handsets powered by Qualcomm chipsets. This followed the completion of interoperability testing of the two vendors’ gear in January.

The subsequent filed trial apparently demonstrated MBMS service deliveries of between 128kbits/s and 256 kbits/s under various indoor and outdoor MBMS channel conditions. Test results also indicated that MBMS technologies, in some conditions, enable greater service reception and capacity than expected so, according to the participants, enhancing MBMS' potential within the commercial network environment.

“This milestone in the development of MBMS technology is important in bringing the benefits of mobile TV to wireless users with network operators being able to leverage their existing infrastructure,” asserts Steve Mollenkopf, senior vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.
John Williamson