Friday, February 03, 2006
Mobile TV to reach 107 million subscribers by 2010
According to a new market research report published by Northern Sky Research , mobile TV is expected to grow significantly in the next few years, driven by the increased capacity of cellular networks, the decreasing price of video-enabled handsets, and the deployment of mobile broadcast networks. NSR predicts that by 2010, there will be 107 million subscribers to mobile TV worldwide using cellular, MBMS and mobile broadcast networks such as DVB-H, T-DMB and MediaFlo. The cellular networks will continue to dominate in the next few years, until the broadcast networks are fully deployed, and until reasonably priced handsets which support these networks become available.
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I think the infrastructure roadmap for mobile operators entering the mobile TV market would be:
3G unicast -> HSDPA upgrade unicast -> MBMS -> seperate broadcast network
Worth to mention is MBMS is broadcast in cellular network. But since MBMS is sharing a signficant portion of the cell power, it would occupy a big part of the cell capacity, depending on how many channels the operators want to support. However, MBMS is more or less a software upgrade and putting the new GM-SC node in the 3G network, which is much more cost-effecient than building a completly new network for broadcasting. But, if end-user demand on 3G services would rapidly increase and capacity would be an issue, then moving the TV traffic out of the 3G network is needed.
Nevertheless, a combination of MBMS and DVB-H could exist. DVB-H would also have difficulties of covering indoor and subway areas. In these areas, 3G is a better alternative. One could of course argue for a unicast 3G solution for these areas.
Technically, MBMS is an interim step between 3G/3.5G unicast and a dedicated mobile broadcast TV network. But chronologically, since MBMS network equipment and terminals will only be available in 2007, full commercial services are only expected in 2008, which is 2 years later than DVB-H.
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