mobile TV
On one stand at 3GSM in Barcelona there is a demonstration of a handset showcasing the mobile digital broadcast technology, DVB-H. The demonstrator points out the clarity of the picture, the ease of navigation, the amount of channels available. The stand in question is Nokia’s – and the demo is impressive, using a beautiful device with a large screen, and nice controls.
At the far end of the hall, on another stand, a man demonstrates a different mobile digital broadcast technology — Qualcomm’s MediaFLO. This demonstration takes place on a demo device cobbled up in-house at Qualcomm, which doesn’t make terminals any more for the open market. The screen is small and the terminal looks like a ruggedised walkie-talkie. But when the demo man changes channels, the device flicks between channel almost instantly. Back on the Nokia stand the demo lady is asked how long channel selection takes. A few seconds, she explains, selecting a new channel. As this is in line with changing media streams on a 3G device, or loading rich media on a computer, this is perfectly adequate, she argues. And sure enough, after about five or six seconds, up pops the new channel.
Over in another corner of the hall, the newly-appointed head of a newly created TV division within Alcatel expounds on his company’s theory on the best way to support mobile TV services across Europe. To Olivier Coste, because it is he, an answer to technological and regulatory issues is to use satellite technology and frequency – the S-band. Only Alcatel, by the way, can do this.
Outside the hall, trying to keep warm in an open fronted trailer parked on the main avenue through the exhibition centre, the people at IP Wireless are excited because mobile TV has given their pet technology, UMTS TDD, some fresh legs, and also because Orange has committed to a trial of their technology.
And there, in a nutshell, is a nice indication of mobile TV at the moment. Self-interest and perception is all-important. If you are a device manufacturer then what you want is something sleek that centres on the device. If you are a licenser of technology then you trust in that and use your usual channels to try and influence the decision makers.
If you are a company trying to expand the possible applications for a specific technology that you and not many others have followed, then you use it to open some new doors. If you are a company with large amounts of assets in space, then why no use that?
So what is the real situation behind the decisions that will have to be made on mobile TV – probably the surprise hit service of 2006?
First off, it appears that it is not necessarily going to be a straightforward technology choice
When Mobile Europe spoke to T-Mobile’s vice president of data Ingo Scheider he said that while he was willing to accept that Qualcomm’s digital mobile broadcast technology MediaFLO may be better technically than DVB-H, he reiterated that his company is happy with the performance and number of channels on DVB-H, and will stick with it.
Speaking to Mobile Europe after the launch announcement of MTV services on the operator’s network, Schneider said “We need to embrace broadcast technologies and we prefer DVB-H.”
Schneider said he was happy with DVB-H because it can offer “20 channels on one frequency resource, compared with DMB which has two or three channels.”
“Customers have also been really impressed by the capability,” he said.
However, there was an implicit agreement that MediaFLO is technically superior due, Schneider said, to it being later off the blocks.
“MediaFLO started later,” he said, “and when you start later and know more, and they built on much of the DVB-H developments, you end up with a better product. So they are starting to think about it in the USA but I think that DVB-H has a good future in Europe.”
Rob Chandhok, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm’s FLO, is slightly nonplussed by such a situation, and although he is quite willing to argue the technical benefits of MediaFLO, he is more concerned that operators understand the business, not just the technical implications of their chosen strategy.
“I like to build a relationship between the technical performance of FLO and the impact that might have on your business. It’s not just a scientific experience, it’s about your capex and opex and the amount of content you can deliver to drive revenues,” Chandhok says.
“If you take a FLO transmitter and a DVB-H transmitter, with all things being equal, FLO gives you double the area or double the number of services. But it’s not just about raw packets, putting a video stream into the physical layer. We think that far more of the discussion should centre on the business case, and the effect that the technology has on that is the most important thing.”
And Chandhok says that message is getting through. “We’ve seen interest from multiple operators in Europe,” he says. Other factors include FLO’s ability to be built into cheaper devices than the high end handsets currently being designed in support of DVB-H, Chandhok says. If TV is a mass service, he argues, then it will need mass market devices. Of course Qualcomm can aid this process as it integrates the receivers into its chipset platforms, but Chandhok claims the company is keen to build a consortium approach, and two smaller chipset companies are already involved.
Also, if TV is a mass service, then you need a large amount of channels so there is something to suit everyone, he argues.
“Everyone is saying ‘I do TV’ at the moment. But it turns out it’s about more than providing a bit pipe. To get the quality of video that people expect is not trivial,” Chandhok counsels.
Something else that is non-trivial is the licensing background. T-Mobile’s Schneider says that for an operator like T-Mobile, not only do they have to deal with the media and telecoms licensing authorities in each country they are active in, but in Germany alone he must contend with 15 federal agencies.
“I fully agree that regulatory strategy is one of the key challenges to bring broadcast services to mobile handsets,” he says.
Alcatel’s solution to overcome the licensing situation is to combine a hybrid of satellite technology with terrestrial repeaters.
A position paper from Alcatel makes the following points about spectrum availability.
“DVB-H at UHF can be deployed in 8 MHz carriers on a MFN topology. Studies conducted in France show that handheld reception on a MFN basis would require very important spectrum resources at UHF when large coverage is required. Moreover, nationwide availability of harmonised UHF spectrum for large DVB-H deployments will only become possible following the switchover and a complex, national re-farming exercise is performed in each Member State.”
Nor does T-DAB offer a better solution.
“L band (T-DAB) would suffer similar limitations unless deployed under SFN (Single Frequency Network) topology. This would probably require abrogating the Maastricht Plan for T-DAB and the consequent re-planning and re-channelling efforts to re-package the spectrum for use by mobile TV.
Mobile TV in UMTS bands can be offered in limited amounts of spectrum but the capacity in terms of addressable audience is also extremely limited.
More generally, only satellite can provide, in a cost effective manner, nationwide coverage for MobileTV within a reasonable timeframe and for a reasonable cost.”
To back up this final claim, Alcatel references a case study in France comparing the cost-efficiency of technology depending on network topologies and the spectrum band used. Its finding were:
“DVB-H in UHF using high power emitters (MFN). This topology provides a cost efficient umbrella cell in urban areas. It is a “best effort” type of service (indoor coverage is not available everywhere) therefore it generates lower ARPU. This topology is less adapted for semi-urban and rural areas where a lot of new emitters and available spectrum are required in order to reduce interferences due to the Multiple Frequency Network topology.
DVB-H in UHF using a cellular network (SFN). This topology provides the indoor QoS services necessary to offer Mobile TV subscriptions based services generating higher ARPUs. However, this technology is particularly expensive to deploy given the need for a large number of additional new antennas and the related new site negotiations with building owners. Moreover, UHF antennas are 3 times bigger than 3G antennas, which could cause environmental issues.
DVB-H in S band using a cellular network. This topology also provides indoor QoS, but due to the adjacency of the MSS band to the UMTS downlink band it can reuse UMTS antenna already in service and therefore eliminating further negotiation with building/site owners. However, like other terrestrial topologies, it is very expensive to deploy in semi-urban and rural areas where would require thousands of repeaters to cover an entire national territory (1 repeater for 8 km2)
DVB-H in L or S band on a medium power satellite. This topology provides a cost efficient solution for offering a “best effort” broadcast service. Complemented with a DVB-H high power network in UHF or L-Band, it could provide a nationwide network for in-car service (radio and TV) or for stand-alone mobile TV terminals.
DVB-H in S band on a full power satellite. This topology provides a cost efficient solution offering an indoor “QoS” broadcast service. Complemented with a DVB-H terrestrial service in S-band it offers a nationwide, indoor QoS solution, offering access to unlimited mobile TV.”
So one can see where Alcatel would like operators and regulators to look. But one of Alcatel’s big clients in 3G TV, Orange, has announced that it is going to experiment with TDtv technology.
TDtv operates in the unpaired 3G spectrum bands that are available across Europe and Asia at 1900MHz and 2010MHz.
IP Wireless says it will allow mobile operators to deliver up to 50 channels of TV for standard cell phone screens, or 17 higher quality QVGA channels, in 5MHz of unpaired 1.9GHz spectrum.
“Unlike unicast mobile TV services which take additional network bandwidth for every subscriber, TDtv leverages MBMS (3GPP Release 6) to allow an unlimited number of customers to watch the same channel or use the same network bandwidth. With TDtv, Orange would also be able to deliver digital audio, multicast, or other IP data cast services to enhance their service offerings,” the company’s coo Dr Bill Jones says.
For IP Wireless its technology, the spectrum availability and the fact that TDCDMA is on the 3GPP progression path makes sense for operators. It will hope for good results from its Orange trial.
Despite FLO, S-Band and TDtv, the front runner in Europe remains DVB-H, with Nokia in particular hailing results of trials from all over Europe. But could non-technical issues come back to haunt European operators.