Just two weeks ago everything in the German DVB-H world appeared to be on track for a full country service launch, until the news broke that the Mobile 3.0 mobile TV service was about to fold, simply because none of the major German cellular operators would get behind it. The implication, still reverberating, is that it was the competitive offering of the DVB-T handsets that Vodafone and T-Mobile brought to market there, which killed the service. But of course it was not.
If that was the case then France, Italy and the UK and around 30 other countries would have seen the rapid introduction of DVB-T handsets years ago. The truth is that the German regulator decided to offer the content and service management of its local DVB-H service to a combination of a publisher and broadcaster ‘ Mobile 3.0 was owned by publishing houses Burda and Holtzbrinck together with South African media company Naspers – when the cellular operators insisted that it should go to them. The DVB-T handsets that they offered were to confuse both the public and the regulator, to convince everyone that the impoverished in-building reception that they offered was the best that could be done, and to obscure the fact that they were choking the channel ‘ preventing DVB-H devices from having any retail space. The European Commission is sure to take a long hard look at this to ensure that what they did was legal and did not breach anti-trust rules, and there is a very good chance that we have not heard the last of this story.
However the lack of any other DVB-T initiative by Vodafone or T-Mobile in other territories, and the fact that neither of them will have made any money at all from the service and that, means that Germany now has a network of transmitters (now owned by TDF, which bought the T-Systems subsidiary that built them) and no route to market. Once the broadcasters and publishers have been swept aside, there is a deal on the table to be done ‘ as long as the regulator goes along with it. It could be that Naspers, which is known to have stopped the flow of money to Mobile 3.0, did so partly to bring the affair out into the open, and will be pressing the potential for European legal action as leverage to be involved with any new deal, which cedes the control of the mobile TV service in Germany back to the cellular operators that have so aggressively sought it.
What regulators need to understand is that cellular operators like Vodafone and T-Mobile have spent years and lots of money developing streaming 3G mobile TV services ‘ and although they are not visually very good, that investment is going to be ruined if a mobile TV service is run in competition with it. On the other hand, in the USA we have seen inferior streaming services being protected by Verizon and AT&T at the expense of true broadcast mobile TV on a network which they were never asked to pay for. There is a happy medium to be struck, and France may be getting this right, whereby broadcasters and cellular operators are forced to work together, and cellular operators cannot ignore new broadcast services because their partners will push it anyway.
If Vodafone Germany and T-Mobile are so keen to offer free to air TV, then why not offer free DVB-H, which at least will get in-building penetration and a clearer picture. However if they do that, then a business model to extract revenue from a localized advertising will be required.
There are something like 15 different technologies that can be used to deliver plain old TV to your mobile, without using any of the spectrum that is needed for talking to each other or for mobile internet usage including DVB-H, T-DMB, China’s STiMi, TDtv, ATSC M/H, ISDB-T and Qualcomm’s proprietary MediaFLO.
The reason for all these fancy techniques is simple, the DVB-T signal for digital TV, is strong enough and robust enough to be picked up on an aerial 10 meters up, on top of your house, as long as it’s set in the right position ‘ but the signal won’t make it to something in your hand, moving around, with no visible antenna, behind walls, and the picture will be lousy. It’s pretty well understood that people around the world want mobile TV, because in Japan there are already 25 million people enjoying for about an hour every day. There as also strong systems in Italy and Korea and places like the Philippines.
So expect a resurgence of DVB-H in Germany and don’t expect DVB-T to become the new technology for mobile TV.