The French DVB-H license is now officially up for grabs and a tender document has been issued by Arcep the French regulator, which anticipates 16 TV channels and various radio programs on the same multiplex.
Initial suggestions that France would have DVB-H mobile TV by the beginning of the Rugby World Cup held in France throughout September and October, fell wide of the mark.
Interestingly the document does not impose a business model, and candidates can opt for free-to-air or pay services, or even a combination of the two. In France, digital terrestrial TV services using DVB-T have emerged with both. And although France has specified the underlying DVB-H technology it has not mandated the conditional access format, saying that either the DVB Open Security Framework and the OMA BCAST Smartcard Profile can be proposed.
The build out requirement will be to reach 30% of the population within three years and 60% within 6 years, but most plans are more likely to be more aggressive than that, as 60% of the population of France can be reached by building out in about 20% of the land area.
The deadline for applications is January 15 and the license should be awarded in April and formal broadcast authorization in June.
France’s large urban population means that only some 100 plus square kilometers of transmitter coverage needs to be built out in order to reach something close to 60% of the population, which means that it could sensibly get some services launched to that kind of population a year after the contract award.
From the shape of French DVB-H trials to date we would expect to see one single large consortium bidding for this, with broadcasters and broadcast network operators such as TDF and TPS, and channel owners such as Canal+, and tower owners Towercast, combining with cellular operators Orange and SFR. So far these have all been involved in DVB-H trials using
handset makers Nokia and Sagem, and French transmitter and encoder designer Thomson through its Grass Valley subsidiary, with perhaps DMT as an alternate transmitter supplier and UDcast providing the core IP encapsulators. It’s the French way.
But there has been some concern that a ‘broadcasters only’ group may emerge to rival such a consortium, with a free to air service in mind.