The decision that Argentina’s president Cristina Kirchner, took a few weeks back to commit the country to ISDB-T, slipped by us on our Summer break, but the coverage given to it has been almost non-existent despite the fact that this single decision changes the entire global mobile TV landscape.
Back when Brazil took the decision, DVB-H optimists told us that this was just for HDTV and that the mobile TV 1 seg element would not be implemented and that Mobile TV was all to play for. They were wrong. The coverage of this particular revolution has been treated in the same way, and this completely ignores earlier promises by Argentinian politicians that their country would endorse whatever standard Brazil went with.
April 2008 we wrote ‘Our expectation is that Argentina and Chile will perform an about face and join Brazil in its ISDB-T future, especially as so much TV comes from Brazil for this region and it will mean Mobile TV roaming will be possible on 1 Seg ISDB-T throughout the region.’
Kirchner was simply ratifying a previously prepared memorandum between the governments of both Argentina and of Japan to introduce the Japanese ISDB-T standard in the country and to co-operate together in the sector. This also involved naturally involves a cooperation agreement on HDTV with Brazil, but also very likely there will be one on video roaming and interoperability of devices.
Perhaps that’s why all the coverage has been about HDTV and the digital switchover, but just as this was important in Brazil, it was not the whole story. It has taken years for Japan to convince its manufacturers, both of TV sets, and 1-seg portable device makers, that it was worthwhile setting up manufacturing operations in Brazil in order to avoid the 85% tax duties that external CE products attract there. There has been some relief of these taxes put forwards, but it is still punitive to import goods to Brazil.
But finally 1-seg devices are beginning to shift in Brazil, after the government stepped in to bear the brunt of the costs of accelerating the build out of the ISDB-T network. People we have spoken to recently say that 1 seg devices are shipping at both TIM Brazil (Telecom Italia Mobile Brazil) and VIVO at a rate of around 10,000 a month each, which is still way behind the 1.5 million to 2 million that ship in Japan, but relatively healthy for this stage in proceedings. And this is with just a couple of phone designs available (notably not those that were originally made by the leading Japanese companies, but mostly Chinese imports from ZTE and Huawei) as well as a handful of TV dongles. When more devices become available, this rate will dramatically increase.
Brazil has around 130 million mobile subscribers out of a population of 190 million, so potentially over perhaps a 5 year time span this is an even bigger market than Japan, all on its own. Japan has 127 million people around 114 million mobile owners and now ships 85% of its handsets with 1-seg.
If you add Argentina to that equation there are another 40 million people, but almost 100% of the population has a phone, and the ISDB-T 1-Seg opportunity seems to get bigger and bigger. Obviously this has much the same effect on full ISDB-T chips and TV sets as well, but DVB-T is way better established around the world than DVB-H and losing most of south America won’t dent that half so much but this is a bit of a death blow to DVB-H. However it does prevent the US inspired ATSC standard retaining much growth room beyond Canada, Korea, Mexico and other parts of Central America.
What this leaves is a positive encouragement for Uruguay, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia and Paraguay to go down the ISDB-T route, and with the exception of Uruguay these countries are highly likely to follow their neighbors adding another 70 million people to the ISDB-T mix and bringing its total population coverage close to 470 million and making it a secure global technology arena in its own right.
Back in 2007 Uruguay chose to adopt both DVB-T and DVB-H, but there is little visible investment in these so far, partly due to Brazil going another route, and this decision make still be open to reversal.
Once again, just as in China, there are no US or European chip makers in sight making chips for ISDB-T 1 Seg, and despite Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Broadcom having designs, there are no design wins to go with them, just as there have been none around the CMMB mobile TV technology of China with the only external chip maker there being Israel’s Siano Mobile Silicon.