Euro stramash over DVB-H backing BY STUART FINLAYSON
Datamonitor estimates Europe will have 42.7 million mobile broadcast TV subscribers in 2012, making it the second largest subscriber base in the world after Asia Pacific.
Mobile broadcast television has the opportunity to combine two of the most successful consumer products in history; television and mobile telephony. However, since the early part of the decade there has been a number of competing formats that have arisen with respect to bearer technologies, including MediaFLO, DMB, DAB-IP and DVB-H. Each of these bearer formats has significant backing for their adoption from companies looking to generate revenue from their success. In an effort to homogenise the market, the EC is tackling fragmentation by promoting “a common European strategy” in an effort to “enable consumers and industry to reap the full benefits of economies of scale.”
While DVB-H bearer technology provides an extremely attractive open standard akin to the current European terrestrial television infrastructure, the move potentially comes as a blow to an industry-led competitive marketplace. MediaFlo, DMB and DAB-IP have all been trialled throughout Europe and the market was expected to harmonise through technological innovation and chipset interoperability sometime in the near term.
Irrespective of bearer technology, Datamonitor considers that some of the biggest concerns facing the adoption of the service still reside with consumer education. Promoting public understanding and illustrating consumer benefits will be a must for market players to ensure that mobile broadcast TV is a success and not just the next expensive flop. Two of the industry’s biggest mobile TV technology groups have voiced their disapproval at the decision by the European Commission’s decision to push for DVB-H to become the single European standard for mobile TV delivery.
Meanwhile, the FLO forum and WorldDMB argue that a single standard for mobile TV is neither beneficial to the industry or cost-effective.
The FLO Forum, a global body of more than 80 companies that supports Qualcomm’s FLO mobile TV service delivery technology, said that while the Commission’s efforts to advance the high potential mobile TV opportunity in Europe - including the focus on spectrum, harmonisation, standardisation and regulation – should be applauded, it believes that the EC’s intention of favouring any one particular mobile TV technology for Europe could stall the advancement of a healthy European mobile TV eco-system.
FLO Forum president, Dr. Kamil Grajski, says: “The FLO Forum supports 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. Each country has its own unique market conditions and each mobile broadcasting technology standard has very different performance characteristics. Locking the European market into one technology model is potentially harmful to the growth of mobile broadcasting in Europe and will hinder the development of innovative technologies.
“Despite its youth, the mobile TV marketplace already offers multi-standard and multi-technology products and services - from chipsets to broadcast network transmission equipment. It is now cost-effective and routine to consider multi-modal mobile TV handsets. These developments should allow for the take up of attractive broadcasting services that will enable economies of scale. Technology is not the problem, but restriction of choice will be,” adds Grajski.
“The Commission’s support for DVB-H for mobile broadcasting in Europe is based, in part, on the suggestion that a mobile TV technology mandate, like the GSM mandate, is necessary to achieve economies of scale and to position European companies globally at the technology forefront. But the analogy is contrary to the market reality today,” says Grajski. “The mobile TV industry is still in its early stages, but the GSM mandate came after GSM had launched with wide commercial success. Technology mandation for mobile TV in Europe is not supported by the facts.
“Technology mandation is not an appropriate regulatory tool in innovative and dynamic markets such as mobile TV, especially where the market remains undecided and where the technology continues to evolve rapidly,” he concluded.
Members of WorldDMB - the international, non-governmental organisation which promotes the adoption and implementation of Eureka 147 based technologies – are equally mystified by the Commission’s unilateral support of DVB-H for mobile television in Europe, apparently to the exclusion of all other mobile TV standards, including the T-DMB format which it backs. T-DMB is widely used in Korea, and is the only European technology for mobile TV sanctioned by China’s state regulator.
WorldDMB claims that the Commission consulted with “all main industry players” via the European Mobile Broadcasting Council (EMBC) but then proceeded to ignore the counsel of that group which it says advocated platform neutrality for mobile TV in Europe. WorldDMB claims the EC also ignored the advice of device manufacturers who say that the need for only one technology is unnecessary.
Quentin Howard, president of WorldDMB, said: “We, like most of the industry, have always advocated a multi-standard approach including DMB and DVB-H. Europe’s citizens and economy will not benefit from EC intervention that restricts technology and innovation.”
WorldDMB members from across Europe believe that mandating only DVB-H risks isolating Europe when the huge Asian markets of China and Korea have already adopted DMB for mobile TV. Indeed, just two weeks ago, Italian public broadcaster RAI announced it has opted for DMB instead of DVB-H for mobile television services. Stefano Ciccotti, chief executive of network provider RaiWay said that a national DVB-H network would have cost 300 million euros, while extending the existing DMB network in Italy would cost just 8 million euros.
One of the Commission's key requirements is that a mobile TV device works seamlessly in all 27 EU States but Howard argues that “Interoperability is an ideal which has little to do with old fashioned ideas about a single technology. One indisputable fact is that spectrum is not available in every state for the DVB-H standard. But perhaps the biggest challenge to interoperability will be the different encryption standards selected by various EU states and telecoms operators.” Howard says the Commission has not addressed these barriers to interoperability.
Howard also claims that DVB-H will have to wait up to five years for spectrum to become available in many countries, while T-DMB allows the majority of European states to roll out mobile TV services immediately. He says interoperable silicon chips have already been developed so that years before DVB-H spectrum is available in some states, receivers capable of delivering DAB, T-DMB and DVB-H via one chip will be available.
“If Europe wishes to compete with Asia, it must maintain a position of platform neutrality, encouraging all mobile TV standards and letting the market determine how each technology is used by Europe's citizens. At the rate technology is evolving, it can only be dangerous and imprudent to mandate just one standard for Europe. By limiting the flexibility of individual businesses and constraining the whole of Europe to just one platform, the Commission risks stunting the growth of mobile TV, and damaging what, by its own estimation, could be a 20 billion euro market,” concludes Howard.
