14 DAY TRIAL // The European Commission has decided to support DBV-H as the only mobile TV standard to use in Europe. This decision is meant to eliminate confusion between handset producers and make sure that they set the grounds for a fair competition.
Nokia currently holds the leading position in providing DBV-H services in Europe. The fact that this standard has been chosen as the one to be used in all handsets from now on only gives the Finnish company a lead start in the race of providing reliable such services to customers.
The European Commission's preference considerably disadvantages companies such as LG and Qualcomm, for example. They have been using formats such as T-DMB and MediaFLO standards in order to provide their customers with mobile TV services. For them to switch to DBV-H would mean spending a considerable amount of resources.
The reason for opting for a single mobile TV standard comes as a result of the European Commission's desire to establish a fair competition between the handset producers that provide this service for the users of their devices. DBV-H already stands as the most popular standard in Europe, which would have probably led to a natural assertion to it instead of others.
The European Commission has also considered making this mobile TV standard mandatory in the future years, depending on the way it will be accepted by the market. At this time, reports show favorable results, which makes this decision even more likely to be taken sometime in the future.
The European Broadcasting Union thinks that time for this to happen has not arrived yet. Waiting for a longer period of time before enforcing a single standard for being used at a large scale, Mobile TV could turn out to be more expensive in the future and is choosing other standards, as building a large network on them needs a great amount of investing.