Reding to impose mobile TV standard

Viviane Reding, the commissioner for information society and media, will next month (10 July) take the first steps towards introducing a mandatory single standard for mobile television across the EU.

Industry players fear that the move will frighten investors and drive down investment in the sector.

Reding is formally to announce DVB-H (digital video broadcasting - handheld) as a preferred standard for mobile TV technology. Her hope is that EU companies will develop widespread service provision for next year’s major sports events, the Euro 2008 football tournament and the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Standards across the EU currently vary, with DVB-H used in Finland and Italy, DMB (digital multimedia broadcasting) in some German federal states and DAB-IP in the UK. Reding’s decision to back DVB-H follows failed attempts by mobile operators and handset manufacturers to unite behind a single standard under the umbrella of the European Mobile Broadcasting Council (EMBC), a body set up by the Commission in 2006 to provide an industry take on technical and regulatory issues affecting the sector.

An extract from the forthcoming communication indicates Reding’s intentions first to encourage and then mandate a single standard. "The Commission [...] considers that DVB-H will form the basis for the successful introduction and take-up of terrestrial mobile TV services in the EU," it says. "It will continue to monitor the situation in the EU and may come forward with proposals [...] early in 2008 including, if appropriate, steps to make an open standard mandatory."

Adriana Mattei, of the digital interoperability forum (DIF), a lobby group advocating the principle of technological neutrality, whereby industry is left to choose standards, said that mandating DVB-H would be counterproductive. "Uncertainty would kick in and then levels of investment would decrease," she said. "Industry needs the flexibility to choose the most appropriate technology to match the needs of each market situation. In the diverse European market, a one-size-fits-all solution rarely works."

According to DIF, industry is less likely to invest if restricted by heavy-handed regulation. The success of the GSM standard for mobile communications, said Mattei, could partly be attributed to the absence of rigid regulatory restrictions over the two decades in which it was developed. The GSM standard grew from an initially fragmented market operating services in different frequencies. Over time, technological gaps were closed by chip and receiver manufacturers. Exactly the same sort of process can be expected to happen to mobile TV if market forces are allowed to operate normally.

"Industry will act to satisfy customer demand," said Mattei.

Conversely, the Commission attributes the success of the GSM standard to agreement on a single approach from an early stage. "The universal success of GSM, which established Europe as the worldwide leader in mobile communications, demonstrates the benefits that can accrue when all players in the industry agree on the development of a new service over a common standard," the communication says.

"It would have been best to have had it last year," said a Commission official of Reding’s announcement. The EMBC was supposed to have submitted clear preferences to the Commission ahead of football’s 2006 World Cup. According to the official, Reding believes the market is now "ripe" for the introduction of a single standard, with demand for services having reached "critical mass".

Critical mass may, however, be a matter for further debate. Italian operators, for example, are unable to agree on how many customers they have. This month 3 Italia claimed to have 600,000 subscribers to its mobile TV service, a figure later disputed by a Telecom Italia executive, who said that the figure applied to the number of mobile TV-enabled handsets delivered to shops. It is estimated that the worldwide market value of the sector could reach €11.4 billion by 2009.

Viviane Reding, the commissioner for information society and media, will next month (10 July) take the first steps towards introducing a mandatory single standard for mobile television across the EU.