Sistema Mass Media is making good on its plans to launch a DVB-H network in each of 16 major Russian cities, and has partnered with Russian CDMA-450 cellular operator SkyLink in bringing these services to market. Initially there are just 5 TV channels.
The Austrian communications authority KommAustria has said that two of the four bidders to manage the DVB-H spectrum there did not qualify due to the failure to have an independent program aggregator on board unconnected to the infrastructure operator. Only Mobilkom Austria and 3 Austria seem to qualify as far as we can make out and Telekom Austria and the Austrian broadcasting technology subsidiary ORS are now out of the application process.
The FLO Forum, the standards body with 90 members which backs Qualcomm’s FLO technology said that it has completed the FLO Receiver Application Programming Interface (API) Specification which defines the interfaces between MAC Layer and the Control and Stream Layers a FLO Receiver protocol stack. The group also announced the completion of its Mobile TV Content & Services Specification.
According to Broadband TV News mobile TV in Poland got a boost this week when all four cellular operators said they would work together on a system – Polkomtel, Centertel, PTC and P4 held a conference to announce this but as far as we can tell none of them have any UHF spectrum anyway, so co-operation is easy.