A number of the French companies behind the DVB-H mobile TV effort there have agreed a charter to guide the introduction of mobile TV in France. The service will come to market under the name T’l’vision Mobile Personelle (TMP) which translates to Personal Mobile TV.
These companies include AB Groupe, Bollor’, Groupe Canal+, Lagard’re, Groupe M6, Next Radio TV, NRJ Group and TF1 and they have all signed the charter which they hope will create, promote and fund the DVB-H network there along with equipment manufacturers and key distributors, for which we should read cellcos.
This is really a bid by TV networks and media groups to take control of the agenda for mobile TV in France, something that cellular operators, specifically Orange, Bouygues T’l’com and the Vivendi-Vodafone owned SFR, may find unsettling. Interestingly Bouygues owns both Bouygues T’l’com and broadcast network TF1, so will see both sides of any argument.
To our mind this is all part of the sudden awareness that mobile TV has to either offer subsidized devices, or be free to air, or both, before it can take off, and a statement from the TMP immediately focused on ‘attractive pricing” and high quality. Naturally the TMP is backing a rapid roll-out, but the organization will be hard pressed to get the major French Cellcos behind any plan which leaves them without control, with a low ARPU addition and with a substantial portion of the costs on their plate.
Back in May 2007 reports emerged that France would delay the launch of its DVB-H multiplex by more than 6 months, well into 2008 and one source, UK researcher Screen Digest, said that it was due to a disagreement over pricing and revenue sharing, with the broadcast element wanting to go with a free to air service. That idea was rejected by sources at Orange, who said that the delay was inevitable due to the timescales for deploying transmitters and gap fillers, along with civil permissions for thousands of rooftop repeaters.
This is one of the reasons that the rival satellite version, DVB-SH looks so acceptable in France. It needs the cellular operators far more than DVB-H does. In the DVB-H set up cellular operators are only needed for their device subsidy and their customer lists and marketing ‘ with DVB-SH, the transmitters are on a satellite as well as on the cellular towers whih cellular operators rent or own.
Already Orange has six million paying subscribers for Unicast TV services and offers around 63 TV channels, so the potential impact on that revenues has to be considered in any DVB-H service launch
As a result Orange has asked the French Audiovisual Council for two TV channels of its own, as part of the DVB-H network, perhaps so that it can both differentiate its offering, but also shift unicast video to DVB-H, which at least will not impact voice capacity.
Orange will offer Orange Sports TV, the most popular of its channels, already in unicast, and O’TV, which is targeted at the youth audience.
Expect more and more tension between the groups as France allocates its DVB-H network systems integrator, and then resolves rules for handing out channels and for funding and billing the whole thing. Quite simply Broadcasters need the service to scale to millions and be watched on average around 1 hour a day, in order for advertising to be worth having, and Cellcos just want more ARPU.
It has been suggested that France will end up with a compromise, hybrid service with a core of free channels, and some premium channels, controlled and charged for by the cellular operators.