Mobile TV technology (update)

Difficult for mobile operators to choose which mobile TV technology to implement. In brief, there are five main current technologies competing, but no one can be said to be better than others or be THE standard in few months or years. The first one is streaming video on current 3G networks. It is easy to do, cheap, but with limited quality due to not-enough throughput, and inappropriate for mass development. 3G networks will not support simultaneous millions of video clips downloads without deteriorating other services (voice and data). The technology is good for testing with a limited number of subscribers (i.e. Vodafone). An evolution is the MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) technology (Ericsson is a major proponent of that technology). The service is using HSDPA network (the 3.5G evolution of 3G networks). It is relatively cheap (just a software upgrade) and do not need new spectrum, but need to reserve part of 3G network capacity for broadcast services, and can handle less channels as other competitive technologies. It will be commercially available in the second half of 2007. The three other technologies use a separate broadcast network and need new spectrum licenses. They are respectively DVB-H, DMB and MediaFlo. DMB is deployed in Korea, as well as in few other networks. MediaFlo is the technology developed by Qualcomm and is proprietary. DVB-H received the best welcome from a lot of suppliers (Nokia, Alcatel with an alternative including satellite, Crown Castle,....), while operators have started pilot networks in a lot of European countries. We are just in the first phase of defining and testing the market.

It seems important that operators and vendors do not forget that such a market will mainly take off if there is a common definition and interoperability between networks. It is not the case today, and we measure the way to do it.