We don’t know how Motorola has walked away with the prize to build out the first part of the Polish DVB-H network, but it runs right against the grain of all that has gone before, in trials dating back to 2006 in Poland.
All the trials were run by TP Emitel including a technical trial in 2006, a commercial trial in 2007 with partners Alcatel-Lucent, DMT, Elti (transmitters), Envivio (encoders), Expway (handset client), Gigabit, LG, Nokia (handsets and content management), Sagem, Samsung, TandbergTelevision, UDcast (IP Encapsulators), Quantum, ZTE. There were further trials in February 2008 with all of the four main cellular operators involved including PTK Centertel (Orange), PTC (Era), Polkomtel (Plus) and P4 (Play).
Everything was heading towards a sane conclusion and Poland was looking like being one of the best European success stories for DVB-H and mobile TV, when in March the Polish regulator awarded the DVB-H license to a transmission company for just over €3 million ($3.8 million).
The winner Info-TV-FM, which builds telecommunication masts and towers for TV broadcasters and for mobile operators won the contract to install DVB-H services in 31 towns and cities in a license which lasts to 2015 and then it must build a national network which will run through 2023. But it won the contract to the exclusion of all of the above incumbents and has now awarded the implementation contract to Motorola, its first ever contract award of this type.
In a bland press release Motorola announced the deal, and talked about the end to end nature of the contract, but given that Motorola has a) never built such a network b) doesn’t make transmitters c) has no current DVB-H handsets in its portfolio, it makes a bit of a nonsense awarding the deal to Motorola.
The initial deal is just for Motorola Home & Networks Mobility to design and deploy a mobile TV network comprising video head end, transmitters, using DVB-H and OMA BCAST, in Warsaw and 9 other Polish cities, by the end of 2009. That’s a very quick build.
Motorola does have encoders, in fact several brands of them, but no experience in any of the 104 mobile TV trials we have tracked around the world. It is likely that Motorola is providing almost none of the equipment used in the implementation, and that it will go back to either the trial providers or fall back on relationships it already has. For instance US encoder company Envivio has provided most of the head ends associated with DVB-H trials around the world, mostly due to the fact that Nokia Siemens OEMs its kit. The one area where Motorola has some DVB-H expertise is in two devices it brought to market in 2008, which are not phones, but which rest on technology acquired when it took an investment in Italy’s Quantum consumer electronics maker.
There are portable TVs the DH01 and the DH02 with the second device having a DVB-H chipset and DVR, a touch screen, as well as a GPRS or HSPA return channel. It also has GPS with mapping capability.
Motorola effective stripped the guts out of the phone so what this actually is, is a back channel for sending SMS and for emergency calls, but one that can also be harnessed also to send DRM entitlement messages to release encrypted content and to upload adverts.
We have never seen Motorola sell any of either device, but it sounded an exciting piece of equipment when it came out last year and suggested that Motorola had at least an interest in DVB-H.
When the devices were launched Motorola said it was working on its own range of DVB-H transmission network equipment, video head end, and an interactive application services delivery platform. But you find them on the web site because we can’t and as far as we are concerned they are un-launched products and unlikely to have originated within Motorola.
If so Motorola is getting into mobile TV services just at a time when its more successful handset rival Nokia, is getting out. A few months back Nokia sold elements of its Mobile TV system held in Nokia Mobile Broadcast Solutions, to India IT Services firm Wipro, transferring 40 employees.
We have always been highly interested in the outcome of Polish Mobile TV because of the low Polish pay TV penetration. In our view the country might be the first to use DVB-H technology to deliver an entirely ‘free to air’ TV service.
However if Motorola does a good job, and if Info-TV-FM gets the cellular operators on board (who have been snubbed remember by not getting the contract), then there could be a lot more work for Motorola, eventually as much as a few hundred million dollars worth.
In the transmissions the DVB-H service in Warsaw delivered 18 local (mostly free to air) TV stations including TVP 1, TVP 2, TVP Info, TVP Sport, TVP Historia, TVP Kultura, TV Polonia, RMF Maxxx, Gazeta.pl, TVN, TVN 24, TVN Style, TV Trwam, Polsat, Polsat Sport, Polsat Sport Extra, TV4, Puls, TV Biznes. Although the service says it will use OMA BCAST it is not clear if this means the use of a DRM system to protect paid content ‘ we suspect not.
If Info-TV-FM can reach commercial terms with the major cellular operators there (unlike the disasters recorded in Germany and France), then a free to air services gives them no additional ARPU, but Motorola may well be pushing an interactive advertising architecture ‘ something that is slowly emerging in Korea and Japan ‘ and that may interest the cellular operators. But given its inexperience in mobile TV ‘ we doubt it.