Since IP wireless became a subsidiary of NextWave, we have heard almost nothing about its TDtv service, until at the Mobile World Congress last week, after a year of silence, it announced a UK mobile TV trial with Orange and T-Mobile.
We caught up with marketing VP Jon Hambidge this week to go through the details of that trial and it may well turn out to be the technology that saves the UK from waiting until 2012 to get itself an acceptable mobile TV system.
Hambidge insists that it is not just places like the UK which are right for TDtv because it has a distinctive lack of UHF spectrum for broadcast mobile TV, but once the service has proved its worth, it could sweep across Europe and Asia Pacific.
We have said in the past that something different has to happen in the UK while France, Germany, Italy and potentially Spain (which has been delayed) all find they can at least get started with DVB-H services. But despite the European Commission’s insistence that DVB-H has to be used as a standard, there is no chance that it will be used entirely on its own for all mobile TV, and there is a cultural discontinuity in using a technology that favors a broadcaster, in forcing a cellular operator to use it.
The technologies that the UK have to choose from are to continue with Unicast streaming, which is not really an option, because it is a low quality, slow take-up proposition, which will result in operators missing out on mobile advertising initiatives; using MBMS on its own; using MBMS in conjunction with existing 3G TDD spectrum which is how TDtv works, or using publicly available S-Band spectrum from a satellite with gap fillers sitting on urban base stations, which is the Alcatel DVB-SH system.
These may well end up superseded by DVB-H or even MediaFLO offered in either 700 MHz or the 1.4GHz spectrum that is currently scheduled for auction by Ofcom later this year, but it is our bet that one or other or all of these competing technologies will be the first to be used for mobile TV in the UK by cellular operators. The technologies we mention are best simply because they give the cellcos the opportunity to take complete control of a mobile TV system, from content to DRM to business model, rather than force them to operate under the behest of broadcasters.
The reason that the TDtv effort of IP Wireless is such a strong candidate since this trial has been launched is because it cleverly relies on sharing of infrastructure between cellular operators, and existing spectrum that doesn’t affect voice revenues at all.
First off the TDD spectrum is meant for one way data delivery, and is not currently used for voice. This is part of the spectrum allocations for 3G in 60 countries, among 150 cellular operators, reaching 500 million cellular customers, says IP Wireless.
Hambidge explained the idea of sharing infrastructure and spectrum, ‘Our London trial will use two separate 5 MHz slices of frequency from Orange UK and T-Mobile UK, because they are next to each other in the spectrum. We managed to get 14 TV channels of 300 Kbps in our 5 MHz TDtv technical trial in Bristol last year, so by using two such channels we can manage 28 TV channels using a single 10 MHz TDD transmitter.’
Because the system uses two antennas and gets spectral diversity benefits, it can achieve in-building penetration from just 35% of the base station sites.
So what happened to Vodafone, 3 Group and Telefonica’s O2 which were all involved in the earlier trial at Bristol? ‘We hope that they will become involved in this trial at some stage and we are still talking to them,’ says Hambidge, ‘but we had this opportunity to use the two contiguous pieces of spectrum, and we wanted to get this trial off the ground as soon as we could. Orange has been one of the key drivers in this trial and was very keen to see it go to the next stage as soon as possible.’
Each of the major 3G suppliers in the UK have around 10,000 base station sites in the UK, and that means that as few as 3,500 of them will require a TDD transmitter in order to get nationwide mobile TV coverage. If Orange and T-Mobile work together after this trial and build out the UK, they will only have to pay for 1,750 base stations each, spanning both of the 5 MHz channels. If the other 3 majors also get involved, then that expense can be shared between 5 of the operators, so they might each pay for just 700 base station upgrades each.
The total cost of a TDD transmitter to go at each base station is around €10,000 (at present exchange rate that’s $15,000), and the total upgrade cost, including an MBMS software upgrade, cabling, power, truck roll and installation is around $30,000. Even if a second transmitter card is required at the base station, so that say Vodafone and O2 could also offer their 5 MHz TDD slices to the system, then that’s only say another $10,000, a total of $40,000 per base station. That would lead to a bouquet of a maximum of 56 TV channels and these would not need any change at the handset, which could have a radio tuner, antenna and demodulator for what we would estimate is a $20 bill of materials.
That would make the national network cost just £140 million for the 56 channels or around £105 million for 28 channels, with each operator spending only a 5th of that, either £21 million or £28 million, which is a paltry investment for a network that would be entirely cellco controlled. To build a DVB-H network first there is spectrum to buy, then about $150 million (£75 million) of transmitter equipment to buy to reach most of the UK, and this would not sit on sites that are already located where there is a relationship. UHF travels far further than 3G spectrum, but it also needs bigger antennas and a central broadcasting system like those which the broadcasters own for each region. So there would be more transmitter sites to locate. Both would need satellite based TV distribution to the transmitter sites and a head end.
At best DVB-H would be the same cost as TDtv, plus the spectrum costs, in order to offer about half the number of channels and that’s if a broadcaster was to give access to existing digital TV transmitter sites, and for that they would want a big say in the subsequent business model, and would no doubt want a piece of the revenue.
But the advantages of using the NextWave subsidiary IP Wireless do not end there. It has a sister company in Packet Video that has designed many software stacks for handset sized devices and it would contribute its Media Fusion Platform, which would provide handset side and server side ESG data, search and navigation with an electronic service guide constructed differently for each customer based on their service subscriptions and preferences. Media Fusion can also handle advertising, and make it different for each person.
Packet Video will also be supplying the matchbox-sized device it launched at Mobile World Congress which can receive mobile TV signals and either plug straight into a handset or convert them to Wi-Fi so that any Wi-Fi enabled player can view mobile TV broadcasts. This includes the iPod Touch and the iPhone, as well as the Nokia N Series and Windows Mobile devices. The idea is to allow mobile subscribers to upgrade to advanced mobile TV services without changing their handset and these and specialist handsets will be used for the trial.
Hambidge says that one of the reasons for the trial is to test out various business models and that one that the group is entirely aware of is a free to air advertising model that has been so successful in Japan and Korea.
‘We think that the service will have around 14 free to air TV channels at launch and around 10 audio channels, and that each operator would then have 5 TV channels of unique content to differentiate their service. We see the 14 TV channels as carrying advertising and the premium channels as being paid for.
‘Free to air viewers would see the ESG for the other channels, rather like a premium cable TV channel, and be able to have samples or buy a single day’s access and sign up for them through the handset.’
As the trial is set up so far, Orange and T-Mobile each want to have around 1,000 clients, in an area of London which is much of the central part of the City, from Paddington Station to a mile East of London Bridge down to Chiswick in the West and South of the river Thames.
One of the things that the trial will have to change from the earlier Bristol trial is that instead of using a constant bit rate codec, variable bit rate video streams will have to be statistically multiplexed together, in the same way that a DVB-H or MediaFLO service are. That can either be used to offer more TV channels or in this case it is likely to be used to offer better quality video. The previous trial was with 300 kbps and 500 kbps video streams, and with decent statistical multiplexing the 500 kbps quality will fit in a 300 kbps stream, making the TV signals at least four to five times as good as existing streamed cellular TV, and roughly in line with DVB-H and MediaFLO live services.
‘Orange and T-Mobile have said that any operator which has TDD spectrum, from anywhere in the world can join in this trial,’ said Hambidge, ‘for a contribution to the capex of the trial they will get full access to the data that comes out of it, and the chance to try out different marketing propositions.’
When it comes to taking the service outside of the UK, Hambidge said, ‘We see 3 types of countries, those where DVB-H is just not going to happen, and we go after them directly with TDtv; countries where DVB-H IS going to happen, but where cellcos are not happy because they are having to give up a certain amount of control and the third group where cellular operators have access to DVB-H spectrum.’
But what will happen if DVB-H eventually comes to the countries with TDtv? ‘It is not difficult to offer both DVB-H and TDtv in the same device. There is room for both tuner and demodulator chips and we look just the same to the applications processor and screen as a DVB-H chip would.’
Which is something that we have preached at Faultline for some time, blended mobile TV made up of at least two separate technologies.
We think that MBMS or TDtv provides a perfect bridge from where cellular operators are now, with their voice services being slowed down by Unicast streamed video services, to where they want to be, with lots of spare 3G capacity, some of which can be used for location and mobile internet services, and a strong mobile TV offering.
It is easy to envisage a handset that has one software player, ESG and search tool, which accesses DVB-H free to air services controlled by a consortium which includes broadcasters; TDtv services controlled by a consortium of only cellular operators, and additionally some MBMS services which dynamically upgrade the most popular Unicast TV channels to a broadcast, and long tail content falling back to download to storage and Unicast streaming.
Combine that with a handset that has storage and which uses MBMS to broadcast video advertising to store on handsets to play when they are called by programming slots, and you have a rich and flexible publishing environment for all constituencies. Other technology suppliers, among them Alcatel with its DVB-SH, would argue that it also fits into this scenario and we wouldn’t disagree, but the company that finds the opportunity to build a customer base ahead of DVB-H, is the one that will likely take the 3G honors.