It seems a done deal. The EC has spoken in favour of DVB-H and European terrestrial mobile broadcast TV services will roll out on DVB-H, or their providers will risk losing out on the economies of scale, interoperability and spectrum authorisation DUE to be afforded to DVB-H. But is there more to the picture than meets the eye, and how far advanced is DVB-H across the continent?
Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media, said back in May of this year, "You will soon see me taking a very clear approach to opening up a single market for Mobile TV."
Reding estimated that today's 3 million European subscribers could grow to nearly 350 million by 2011. "This is a tremendous opportunity for Europe to maintain its leadership in mobile technology and mobile services," she said.
She portrayed the danger of "squandering" this opportunity, and said "we" need to build economies of scale rapidly and give certainty to developers of technologies and networks. This was why she was in favour of a "robust and proven single open standard – DVB-H – based on European technology (with the support of Community funds)", which is compatible with terrestrial digital TV and which is emerging as the preferred choice for the majority of mobile TV pilots in Europe.
Perhaps the important part of Reding's preference can be explained by the words, "with the support of European funds." Or perhaps it was DVB-H's backwards compatibility with DVB-T. Reding was obviously aware that this approach would generate some criticism, stating,"Let me be very clear: I know that competition among different standards can, for some time, be a good way to let the market identify the best solution. But, we have been waiting for too long. The opportunities are slipping away. It is time to break the deadlock".
IMS Research says that over the last few months, standards-based decisions have been getting increasingly regionally influeneced. As well as the European Commission clearly favouring DVB-H as the Pan-European broadcast mobile TV standard, AT&T abandoning Modeo and DVB-H in favor of MediaFLO, and Crown Castle's subsequent divestiture of Modeo's spectrum means a strong regional base for various standards are becoming clear.
IMS Research is forecasting that by 2011 the Americas region will account for 60% of worldwide FLO subscribers. Similarly, Europe is forecast to claim 61% of worldwide DVB-H / DVB-SH subscribers. Other standards, such as T-DMB and ISDB-T, are also expected to become increasingly region-specific between 2007 and 2011, with an increasing number of these standards' subscribers coming respectively from Korea and Japan.
Anna Hunt, Research Director at IMS Research, comments, "Operator and government decisions about which mobile TV standard to deploy in each country or region depend on a number of variables including spectrum availability, existing cellular and DTT infrastructure, market needs, and national political and economic interests. This has resulted in a situation where in certain regions, different standards gained a distinct advantage in building the consensus required to deploy a broadcast network, thereby gaining the first-mover advantage so key in a standards war."
Reding hinted that she may give the industry till the end of 2007 to "agree a common standard". She hasn't, and of course the industry can do no such thing. But by making it look as if the delay to mobile TV (if there has indeed been one) has been due to the competing standards, she has deftly deflected attention away from far more pressing matters of regulation and authorisation than mandating a standard.
That said, in the supply chain that will determine innovation around devices, content delivery and discovery and interactivity and personalized services, an interoperable, standards-based approach would have clear benefits.
According to Analysys, which recently produced research into mobile TV market dynamics, whilst most observers expect mobile TV to become a multi-billion Euro industry by 2010, and will be well on the way to being accepted as a mass-market product by then, the supply-side industry dynamics are not yet clear.
"Our research shows that there is an expectation of real demand for mobile TV services, driven by the premium that users place on convenience, and this could be expected to represent a significant revenue opportunity. However, recent evidence suggests that the mobile TV market could be significantly more complex than the existing terrestrial broadcast environment", says Jim Morrish, Senior Consultant at Analysys.
Analysys' research found that latent demand appears to be strong and that mobile TV has a positive effect on average revenue per user (ARPU), and some mobile users can be expected to switch their service provider in order to secure mobile TV services. It also said the consumption model is becoming clearer, with usage driven by convenience, typically resulting in shorter viewing sessions than would be expected with traditional TV services. Importantly, usage in the home, in the office and whilst commuting are emerging as key consumption locations.
This last point is an example of how the debate around the specific competing broadcast technologies needs to move on to encompass complementary technologies. Morrish says that the debate does not yet fully take into account the expected consumption model, such as high usage within the home, and preferred content types in order to establish an optimal technical solution.
"With some studies suggesting that up to 35% of mobile TV consumption will take place in the home, femtocells must surely figure in any operators' technical plans for offering mobile TV. Given the popularity of services that are non-real time in nature (for example, soap operas),
consideration must also be given to the 'sideloading' phenomenon that is currently displacing some of the revenues that MNOs might otherwise have hoped to generate from music downloads. The real advantages of broadcast
mobile TV technologies lie in the ability to provide a ubiquitous baseline of content, available on demand, with other technologies being used either where long-tail or interactive content is required, or where consumption is to some extent pre-planned."
"As each alternative technology is introduced, a new potential route is established from content owners to consumers, and thus MNOs must bear the risk of disintermediation, while content owners and aggregators have the opportunity to secure customer relationships. Mobile TV is potentially a huge opportunity, but it is not yet clear how the pie will be shared", Morrish concludes.
ROK TV's Bruce Renny says an over-reliance on linear TV will inevitably bring problems.
"Expectations for the commercial uptake of full-length broadcast TV on mobiles as subscription services are over-optimistic and the demise of Virgin's mobile TV service reflects that. After all, why pay a subscription fee to receive the same TV content on your mobile that you already get at home? Particularly when people don't watch TV on mobiles for more than a few minutes at a time.
"Most mobile TV viewing is for just a few minutes. To be commercially successful, you have to provide a combination of live news, sports updates and video-on-demand made-for-mobile content which is instantly engaging. Simply broadcasting linear TV to mobiles is not the answer."
Yet the discussion around TV has to also think about consumers' use of video services. 2006 saw the beginnings of mass market adoption of video services across mobile networks building on the success of broadband and internet multimedia. Analysys says the market for mobile video alone will more than triple in 2007 provided operators, aggregators, broadcasters and content owners implement a number of initiatives to further increase the usage and uptake of these services. With the existing applications of video streaming, portals, video telephony and video-mail being reinforced with such technologies as video ringback, media ring, video blogging and video share it is an ideal time to pursue mass adoption of mobile video services.
D2see, the specialist mobile video technical service provider, claims to be responsible for 50% of the recent growth in video shortcode uptake. In the last 6 months, 43 video shortcodes have been ordered in the UK, and over half were by D2see on behalf of its Content Provider customers.
Jeremy Flynn, CEO of D2see commented, "It took 18 months for the first 100 services on 3G video shortcodes to be launched, and just 6 months for another 43 to be launched. The rate of growth is accelerating fast."
Until recently the Off Portal D2C mobile video market was characterised as a market for pioneers. More recently, the demand has been from mainstream ‘Fast Follower' content providers.
D2see is seeing the market demand move on from video portals where the user makes a video call to a shortcode, and selects from a nested menu of video clips. Content providers now also want to launch more sophisticated services like video chat, user generated content and dating, taking advantage of D2see's Oxygen platform's capabilities in live feed and 2-way video record and playback.
But for the video providers there is a strong need for cross-operator support., Flynn says, "Full cross-network support of video shortcodes will drive video growth just as cross-operator support of premium SMS did in 2002."
The industry also needs to work on interoperability. Past experiences, notably in the field of interactive television, demonstrated that a common standard is not in itself sufficient to guarantee interoperability, especially for levels higher than the physical transport of the signal.
One of the main objectives of bmcoforum is the promotion and development of open markets for mobile broadcast services worldwide.?To meet this objective bmcoforum is defining commercially focused implementation profiles of specifications developed by organisations such as DVB and OMA to be used in interoperability tests, pilots and early market launches. A recent ?test camp held in Berlin focussed on the bmcoforum implementation profile of the OMA BCAST 1.0 enabler specification. The test camp comprised some ten server and twelve client implementations. Essential functions like the Electronic Service Guide as well as first implementations of the DRM and Smartcard profiles for Service and Content Protection have been tested. Accoring to Nokia the tests conducted at the test camp have demonstrated a high level of interoperability.?The testing companies include CoreMedia, Discretix, Expway, Irdeto, LG Electronics, Envivio, Netzwert, Nextreaming, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, NXP Semiconductors, Panasonic, Rohde und Schwarz, RRD, Silicon & Software Systems (S3), SafeNet, Samsung, Sidsa, Tata Elxsi, Thomson, T-Systems Media & Broadcast, UDcast, WRG.
bmcoforum plans to finalise its first version of the implementation profiles of the OMA BCAST 1.0 enabler specification in the second half of 2007, thereby enabling equipment vendors the ability to provide and provision for commercial solutions commencing 2008. ?
It seems, then, that discussions around mobile TV need to move on from "My Standard is Best", to looking at the likely implications of different distribution methods and use cases, as well as continued focus on the interoperability of applications and services support.
DVB-H Trials and Services Currently Active Or Planned in Europe:
Albania: DigitALB and GrassValley providing DigitALB Platform content with 14 Channels, aiming 80% of the territory.
Austria:Commercial rollout of DVB-H services in time for the start of the 2008 UEFA European Football.Half of a nationwide DVB-H multiplex set aside for public service broadcasters and other subscription channels. Other half of the multiplex will be reserved for a "premium bouquet" with 15 channels being offered initially, rising to 30 later.
Belgium: Ghent (City Coverage, indoor/outdoor), Brussels/Mechelen (local coverage). An IBBT project to with Telenet, Belgacom and Proximus, the VRT as manager of the transmitter network, and Siemens, Option and Scientific Atlanta as equipment and systems suppliers.
Denmark: Copenhagen. 6 channels (DR1, TV2, TV2 News, TV3, TV3+, MTV) Nokia ESG system, Envivio Encoders. Nokia N92 and Nokia N7. 1 Transmitter.
Finland: Digita, MTV3, Swelcom, SBS Network opened for commercial use on December 1st 2006. On May 10th 2007 free-to-air commercial terrestrial channels added to the platform. Pay services to be added in future. The network is currently being rolled out with 25% coverage.
Germany: Consortiums bidding for two separate licenses, one to build and operate the DVB-H network, and one to aggregate content and sell the service. The results of the licensing process are expected in Autumn 2007.
Ireland: Dublin, O2 Ireland and Arqiva. Up to 400 users with customised Nokia handsets. Up to 16 services, including interactive channels.
Italy: By May 2007 3 Italia was reporting a customer base of 600,000 month after launch on June 5th 2006.?DVB-H part of an "all inclusive" propositio. Also a pay-per-view model, allowing pre-pay access from one day to 3 months.?Vodafone launched in December 2006, using pay-per-subscription, pay-per-view, pay-per-time.
Netherlands: Nationwide coverage 2Q 2008 – 3Q 2008. One wholesaler with mobile network operators selling the mobile TV service to the public.
Switzerland: As in Austria, UEFA?football is the target. Initial service in the host cities of Berne, Basel, Zurich and Geneva. DVB-H is not mandated but is recommended. The licence will be for 10 years and the winner will have to provide coverage to 30% population by the end of May 08.