Russia has been fairly slow to adopt mobile TV, with tiny Spanish technology supplier Sidsa perhaps picking up most of the headlines for DVB-H installation in Yekaterinburg, which is just about ready to go live. But it’s the company which can dominate Moscow, with its 10 million population which will really show the direction of Russian mobile TV.
And this week AFK Sistema, the Russian owner of cellular operator MTS, re-iterated its plan to spend $200 million building out DVB-H in Moscow plus 16 other 1 million inhabitants plus Russian cities.
Sistema has been saying that this is it’s plan for over a year, but back in April, it hit something of a roadblock when negotiations seemed to be going sour with the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network (RTRS), a core Russian TV and radio broadcaster, which Sistema needs access to in order to build out cheaply with its chosen DVB-H technology. RTRS at the time said that it would not give access to Sistema unless it agreed to enter into a joint venture with RTRS.
This week Sistema gave no hint of just how this has been resolved, only to say that it was now going ahead with the project, that it would be both above ground and in the Moscow underground, and it can get all the regions built out in parallel and the system would be ready on time, sometime during early 2008 for a commercial launch.
Part of the resolution appears to be that Sistema will offer the service to other cellular operators, and not just to MTS subscribers. Hints to the Russian and trade press say that a subscription will be between $12-$15 and that the work will be done by Sistema subsidiary Sistema Mass-Media and will target 350,000 subscribers during the first year.
Russian billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov which is the major shareholder in AFK Sistema has spent the past few years stalking a shareholding in Deutsche Telecom and remains keen to get the German government to okay such a stake, which might mean that its MTS shifts at some point in the future to the T-Mobile brand. That perhaps explains Sistema’s obsession with DVB-H for its mobile TV technology, which T-Mobile also seems to be married to in its native Germany. However the Russian geography might better support a satellite based technology like Alcatel-Lucent’s DVB-SH.