lauantaina, joulukuuta 24, 2005

Mobile TV

Mobile TV has particular appeal to many industry players because it holds out the promise of taking the western hemisphere back towards competition on function and service rather than on price. Many companies are becoming tired of fighting for market share in a market where the margins have become wafer thin.
  1. Stockholm, Sweden — In a country where cell phone market penetration exceeds 110 percent and 3G networks already cover 98 percent of the geography, you'd think delivery of TV to consumer handsets would be a pushover.
  2. However, such an assumption fails to take into account both the logistics and the politics of mobile TV in Sweden, where broadcasters are pitted against mobile operators, the technology landscape is a battle of the titans (Ericsson vs. Nokia) and regulators face huge pressure to revise — or not to revise — their plans for the digital TV spectrum.
    In short, it's a mess.
  3. Sweden thus far has made no regulatory decisions on spectrum allocations for mobile-TV broadcast. There is no consensus on standards, and no viable business models have been worked out.
  4. Sweden's dilemma stands in sharp contrast to several countries where leading network operators — or the government — have already settled on their technology choices for mobile-TV broadcast, with some service providers taking active roles in the testing of both technology and business models.
  5. South Korea, for example, last week launched the world's first commercial mobile-TV, -radio and -multimedia services based on the Digital Multimedia Broadcasting standard, which is part of the Digital Audio Broadcast platform.
  6. Finland, whose government has settled on Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) for mobile-TV broadcasting on its UHF spectrum, last week closed the initial deadline for applicants offering mobile-TV service. Four candidates have emerged.

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