Nine months after saying that DVB-H will be officially made the European technology of choice for Mobile TV, the European Union has taken one more step ‘ simply mandating that its member states encourage ‘ through their regulators ‘ the uptake of the standard.
Really it’s a nothing story because the EU position was well known back in July and even before that in March last year, when Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for the Information Society and Media, made her policy line clear.
Just where that leaves countries like the UK, with far too many constituents calling for UHF spectrum, or Poland or Spain, with similar problems and delays, we’re not sure. Should the UK not be allowing Orange and T-Mobile to run a TDtv network in the UK in spectrum they already own? Will Ofcom step in to intervene? Should it also intervene to stop Alcatel implementing its DVB-SH satellite version of DVB-H with spectrum that is already available?
Ofcom has its own problems trying to auction 40 MHz of L-Band spectrum in the 1452 to 1492 MHz range by April 10th, when it has already said that the submissions are to be technology neutral, and that the usage isn’t even mandated. However this spectrum is the only likely set of airwaves for mobile TV on the near horizon. But to use this spectrum with DVB-H will require thousands of transmitter sites, and cost anything from double to four times the cost of a network build out in 700 MHz. The result would like defeat the aims of the EU, to have a series of linked TV networks that a handset owners cannot roam between – because devices would need a different radio.
And if the rules don’t and cannot apply in the UK, can they be applied anywhere else in Europe? No. We’ve said this once and we will say it again, this is about not allowing Qualcomm’s MediaFLO a head start in Europe, and stopping Korean manufacturers having a head start here with T-DMB services and it can only apply to spectrum that has not already been brought to market, or spectrum to be sold with auction rules that are already specified. In other words it can have virtually no affect at all.
We already know that most of the major cellcos have already stated they will not bid for the 1452 spectrum to use it for Mobile TV. That is not to say that they won’t bid, but not with that use in mind. There exists the faintest hope that BSkyB, the News Corp satellite TV subsidiary might bid for it and use it with MediaFLO, but recent executive statements at Sky seem to suggest that it is an arms dealer in the mobile TV race, and will not put its own army together after all.
The European Commission statement said, ‘The addition of DVB-H is a new step towards establishing a Single Market for Mobile TV in Europe that will enable all EU citizens to watch TV on the move. Mobile TV could reach a market of up to €20 billion by 2011, reaching some 500 million customers worldwide.’
Our own forecast, just published, reckons the number is perhaps closer to 300 million by 2012, and here the Commission has taken the most optimistic forecast out there, to make it look like there is a big opportunity. But Europe’s insistence on using DVB-H, plays to the strength of national broadcasters, not cellular operators, and these are pushing more and more for the free to air model that they are confident with, and which has worked in Korea and Japan, but are being pushed back by the cellular community, which do not want to cede control of the European mobile TV agenda.
‘For Mobile TV to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the technology,’ says the Commission statement attributed to Reding, a statement that couldn’t be more wrong. There must first be certainty about the business model, before the technology is selected.
The statement also talks about a transparent intellectual property regime for DVB-H, something that has curiously not been addressed by Nokia, one of the lead intellectual property owners in the standard, and the Commission says it will closely monitor progress towards a DVB-H patent pool.
If the European Commission really wanted to do something, it would put pressure on the local regulators to find UHF spectrum in most European countries, something that DVB-H supporters have been calling for, with only qualified success, for at least 3 years.