Mobiles Fernsehen Deutschland (MFD) is nothing but persistent about its mobile TV ambitions in Germany and it has leveraged its almost two years lead in bringing what turned out to be an unsuccessful T-DMB service to market, into a much anticipated win in the consortium running the DVB-H platform in Germany.
The contract to build the DVB-H network has been under way for some time, with T-Systems being awarded that over three months ago, but the German mobile experiment, in somewhat similar fashion to the Finnish one, and in an exact copy of how broadcasting tends to work in Europe, means that another marketing oriented company will bring the network to market, managing the content selection and commercial terms.
The first selection for that job went to Mobile 3.0 in November, which is a joint venture between MFD and Neva Media, and now that it has proven it can select and negotiate with its media partners, it was confirmed last week as the company running the nationwide mobile TV rollout. The decision was taken by the directors of the state media authorities and still has to be approved by regional authorities. But the network, content and systems should all be in place in time for the Euro 2008 football championship, which will be played in Switzerland and Austria, and which has long been seen as a key launch pad for the service.
Mobile 3.0 will include content from TV channels ARD, ZDF, RTL, Vox, Sat.1, Pro Sieben, N-TV and N24 and include radio stations Digital 5, Big Buddy and Kick FM.
Although there was a lot of fuss about whether or not a consortium of the three largest cellular operators, T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2, should have been allowed to bid, in the end it is likely that they had too little experience putting together content, and would prefer instead to have an arms length relationship whereby they can support the DVB-H service or ignore it and offer their own TV services.
This type of layered arrangement for broadcasting systems might be seen by some as altogether too cozy, and not provide sufficient differentiation between the different cellular operators, nor give them enough freedom to offer different TV packages. Although each of them may still be able to offer their own conditional access system (DRM) and run their own customer base, depending upon how Mobile 3.0 decides to run the service. If any of the cellular operators were entirely sure that mobile TV would be worth the type of revenues that could support a $300 million network build out, then they might have bid on their own to run a service, and that may well happen once there is spectrum on the market post digital switchover, and once the market for mobile TV is fully established.
Another way to differentiate offerings will be for 3G carriers to adopt MBMS as a premium platform, and offer DVB-H channels alongside these.
As it is MFD, a company majority owned by Naspers of South Africa, has been running the Watcha T-DMB service since mid-2006, but with almost no success. Latest estimates are that only 3,000 consumers bought into the service. It offered only five TV-channels which were much the same as many of those it will offer on the DVB-H platform including ARD, ZDF, N24, MTV Music, ProSieben-Sat.1 Mobile and the bigFM2see visual radio station.
Its partner in Mobile 3.0 is Neva Media which is a joint venture between prominent German publishing houses Hubert Burda Media and Holtzbrinck.
Just a week earlier T-Systems Media and Broadcast got EU clearance for a merger with the French Telediffusion (TDF), a deal announced back in November, with the French company paying some $1.25 billion to acquire the T-Systems subsidiary, and the two broadcast network operators becoming one of the largest broadcasting businesses in Europe.
Interestingly TDF already owns Digita, the Finnish broadcast operator that won the contract for delivering a DVB-H multiplex across Finland. TDF is also likely to be involved in building out the French DVB-H network.
So on the one hand the MFD parent Naspers, which controls both of the African DVB-H trials and services, is showing an exceptionally strong hand in mobile TV, just as a single French broadcast operator is attempting to annex much of Europe’s mobile TV business.
If cellular operators completely fail to see the investment opportunity in mobile TV, broadcasters and their technical partners are abundantly clear what a huge opportunity it is and given that their markets are more shaky and tend to be shrinking not growing, how completely necessary it is for their survival.
Germany has an area of about 350,000 square kilometers, and T’Systems says that it will eventually build out to reach 90% of the population. To do that it will probably have to cover no more than 30% to 40% of that land area, some 100,000 to 130,000 Square kilometers. Since transmitters can reach around 25 kilometers in each direction this will need around a hundred main 50 KW transmitters to power up each region or city and each of these will have to be supported by 30 or 40 gap fillers, which makes this one of the biggest DVB-H transmitter deals likely to be placed across Europe for mobile TV.
The network build will begin in Hanover in Spring and the first live broadcasts should run in the middle of 2008. By the end of 2008 around 15 cities will have been covered and by the end of 2009 all towns above 150,000 people will be reached. The magic 90% coverage figure is supposed to be happen by 2015, but this will depend entirely on the rate of service take up. No good putting in more transmitters and more towers if no-one is paying for the service, and but on the other hand if the money is flowing in, MFD and the operators will be encouraging T-Systems to hurry up.