Regulators have a surefire aim when it comes to shooting themselves in the foot. With the world watching, and the entire future of DVB-H in the balance, Germany and France both need to get agreement fast on how to go about licensing mobile TV. These two countries will provide the volume ordering for DVB-H equipment if they fire the starting gun, with all that implies for the eco-system, a way forward through this recession and cheaper and more varied handsets with DVB-H in them.
But the French regulator CSA has come out in airs and graces saying that it is prepared to be flexible, but has turned out to be anything but, and pronounced that it will not relax the requirement to either deliver 16 channels, or to reach any less than 30% of the French population within three years. The CSA is probably right, in that if you fail in these two objectives DVB-H or any other kind of mobile TV will not take off.
However this is a direct answer to broadcast network company TDF (T’l’diffusion de France), which said back in January that it was prepared to take on all of the costs of building a DVB-H network as long as it could build it out to just Paris and 5 other cities. It was originally proposed that the build out took in 15 cities.
If this had been agreed, the earliest that broadcasting could have started is next year ‘ three years after France had hoped to launch DVB-H services, during 2010. Now the impasse is back in place and TDF needs to get some agreement from one of the other players, such as Orange, to share some of the cost burden, if it is going to go ahead and get this thing built.
The German issue is well know, where the license was kept away from a consortia of cellcos, including T-Mobile and Vodafone and then, after failure to take off, withdrawn. Now the regulator there is going cap in hand to these two major forces in European cellular and trying raise some interest in picking up where the previous licensee left off. Opinions are divided over whether this will be successful, although there is a network already built in four cities, which they could take over tomorrow.
The CSA French regulator position was explained in an interview given in local daily newspaper Le Figaro and what it said is that it would be fine with decisions to build out slower after that initial 30% coverage and would not insist on its mandate to build to 60% of the population within six years. This leaves the way open for an Alcatel satellite system in France using its DVB-SH technology, which is likely to launch on the back of the issuing of Mobile Satellite Service licenses across Europe, which should happen later this year.
All of this is known by the regulator, but it decided not to roll over for TDF. Earlier its decision to pick the TV channels which will be offered on the multiplex was perhaps the process of shooting its other foot, because Orange has said in public that Mobile TV will not be successful with ‘those channels.’
Building DVB-H throughout Paris will be the most expensive part of any build out, but it will rely on one or more of the very large existing TV transmission antenna to drive the whole system. Transmitter repeaters will then be needed in order to deal with the immense urban canyons created by dense buildings. The remainder of the cities really are not so expensive and many of them could be fed by a single transmitter and further rooftop transmitters, rather than entirely new high towers. Total cost for a city under 1 million people would be likely to be around $1 million in equipment and then the labour, roof rental, and civil permissions process eating another similar amount of money.
TDF is one of the strongest transmission businesses in Europe and already built the Finland mobile TV system through subsidiary Digita, and the Germany and Hungarian systems through the T-Systems Media and Broadcast business, which it acquired last year. Unless TDF can break this impasse in France and the one in Germany, its gamble to dominate European mobile TV will fail.