For years in the Philippines there has been a fight between a number of the telecommunications suppliers to produce a DVB-H broadcast mobile TV service. This week one of them, myTV from Smart Communications, a subsidiary of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT), was switched off indefinitely according to local newspapers.
It turns out that this service was only issued free to air, on a trial basis, and it was waiting for the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to give it a license to transmit permanently. The NTC has not renewed its trial license, which has been in operation since 2006, due to a legal action from the local cable TV companies. The cablers want to restrict mobile TV delivery to the cellular networks, which means 3GPP streaming. There are some services which have introduced this in the Philippines, for instance one from Globe Telecom, but the video is described a poor quality by comparison.
The other DVB-H service that we have tracked in the Philippines, from Dream called Dream Mobile TV, was also launched in 2007, but appears to have also withered in the vine, due to lack of handsets. When we last looked both services were waiting for cheaper DVB-H handsets, and yet were limited to Nokia N92 or N77 handsets, now both out of date.
Smart originally said that it would broadcast in Manilla and five other cities and that it would get 70,000 subscribers in its first few months. While there are no numbers available, it now looks like DVB-H is all but dead in the Philippines, another nail in the (already crowded) coffin of DVB-H.