Mobile TV Success on the European Market Is Questioned

The GSM Association has presented some recommendations for efficiently introducing Mobile TV in European countries. The matter of costs involved for providing such services for these areas makes its future rather questionable.

Having a TV-enabled mobile phone has proved to be the latest trend in cellulars over the last period of time. Moreover, the range of mobile TV and video broadcast technologies also includes MBMS, DVB-H, DMB and MediaFLO. Still, for European countries, DVB-T is better, rather than DVB-H, as it doesn't need to work with wireless carriers for providing broadcast and distribution.

Another thing about DVB-T is that it comes for free from terrestrial broadcasters. All that people need is a portable media player. The disadvantage that this technology brings is the high power consumption. Still, the Mobile TV technology combines 3G technology with the DVB-H one in order to offer best performances to its users.

"There are other ways of accomplishing interoperability, and Mobile TV is not the same as classical TV", observed Bosco Fernandes, Chair of the Joint Group. For this reason, the GSM Association Mobile TV Group has made several regulations which are meant to minimize technical and commercial barriers for European countries.

Among the key recommendations that UMTS forum has made for future use of mobile TV services, there are advices on interacting with other multimedia services and on making it available in all member countries. Moreover, they suggest calling on the industry and standard bodies to standardize the mobile device part of Conditional Access and DRM to be deployed in all devices to achieve interoperability and economies of scale.

The European Commission has invested up to now an average sum of 40 million euros for Mobile TV research and supported the development of the open Digital video Broadcasting (DVB) standards. A high standard Mobile TV market will not develop unless regulatory obstacles between countries will be removed and provide services at convenient prices.