Digital Trends

The European Union is urging a single standard for mobile TV.

 

European Telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding is backing the DVB-H standard, and wants member countries to get behind it quickly.

 

The mobile TV market is growing rapidly, and the EU considers it vital that the region stays competitive, especially as mobile TV could be work $27 million by 2011. Ms. Reding had hoped industry would make a decision about a standard, but at this point felt it necessary to take a lead.

 

“We can either take the lead globally - as we did for mobile telephony based on the GSM standard developed by the European industry - or allow other regions to take the lion's share of the promised mobile TV market,” she said. “Wait-and-see is not an option. The time has come for Europe's industry and governments to switch on to mobile TV.”

DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds) was developed with almost $53m of EC research cash and has so far been tested or rolled out in eighteen European countries. Msd. Reding said the standard will be "legally encouraged" among all 27 member states, and her decision should speeding up the rollout of services, which the EC believes could reach some 500 million customers worldwide by 2011.

Currently around seven global standards exist for mobile TV. DMB is widely used in South Korea, while in the US, Qualcomm has its own the MediaFLO standard. Virgin Mobile in the U.K. is already offering TV services based on DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting).

However, DVB-H could be a problem for Britain, since it relies on freeing up parts of the radio spectrum, especially the UHF spectrum, which won’t be available until digital switch-over is complete in 2012.