3GSM 2007 Mobile TV Highlights

As expected, 3GSM 2007 was packed with Mobile TV demonstrations everywhere - including handsets, chipsets, network infrastructure, enabling technologies and content.

On the handset side, the show's major announcement was probably the Nokia N77 DVB-H handset. As rumored just before the show, this is a mid-range handset, which is targeted at initial DVB-H deployments in Vietnam, Italy and Finland. I took a look at the video quality, and it was quite good at 15 frames per second. However, every minute or two there was an occasional error in the stream (picture freezes or breaks into blocks). The demonstrator at the N77 stand in the Nokia booth claimed that this was due to the "crowded network at the show", which seems highly unlikely since DVB-H is a broadcast network... The channel switching time was also quite long, at 4-6 seconds. The long switching time was also apparent in other DVB-H demos at the show, and I also noticed this issue in CES demos last month, which leads to the conclusion that this is probably an inherent issue with current DVB-H implementations. The Nokia representative told me that the handset will cost 370 Euros without subsidies, and has a 5 hour TV viewing time, and 7.5 days standby time.

Another DVB-H handset was demonstrated by Sagem. Sagem is not a top-tier mobile handset vendor, but their myMobileTV handset is very nicely designed, and features an innovative auto-rotate feature which rotates and expands the image based on the direction in which the device is being held, using an acceleration sensor. In this demo I also witnessed the long channel switching time, and the occasional frame error every 1-2 minutes. The Sagem demonstrator came up with another original excuse for this, claiming that it was due to a low battery on the device (although the device was connected to a power supply and charging...). Another interesting handset demonstrated at the show was the Samsung SGH-F510, a slim DVB-H phone which blends well with the company's "thin is in" design.

Qualcomm showed the MediaFLO handsets which will launch with Verizon's service at the end of this quarter, the Samsung SCH-U620 and the LG VX9400. Qualcomm also showed a prototype handset of its own design, which is used mainly for testing the service. Judging by the video quality, it seems that MediaFLO currently has the edge: Frame rate is about 20-25 frames per second, and channel switching time is 2 seconds. MediaFLO also had a larger variety of channels at the show: 20 TV channels vs. only 9 channels which were available on the SIDSA DVB-H demo network at the show.

Other vendors were showing unicast live TV over cellular networks, circuit-switched streaming (using 3G video telephony for content delivery), and TV interactivity solutions. Compared to last year's show, 3GSM 2007 demonstrated the maturity of mobile TV technology and the range of available handsets, driven by commercially deployed services. However, subscriber numbers for paid mobile broadcast TV services in Europe remain low, both for DVB-H and for DAB-IP, so the question of return on investment still remains.

Highlights of the IMA Mobile TV Conference

The Israeli Mobile Association (IMA) held a conference yesterday dedicated to the topic of Mobile TV technologies and services. The conference featured an impressive array of speakers from technology companies and mobile operators in Israel and abroad, who provided useful insights into the current mobile TV market. Below are some highlights from the conference.

Martin Richartz, Senior Technology Manager at Vodafone Group R&D, described the "mobile broadcast TV showdown" which will take place in Germany during the FIFA world cup next month. The games will be broadcast using a DVB-H network, operated by a consortium of all 4 German MNOs, and using a T-DMB network, operated by German start-up MFD. Mr Richartz urged the industry to converge on a bearer-agnostic IP service layer, which will ride on top of MBMS, DVB-H and eDAB, and enable service providers and content creators to roll out global services.

Guy Bauman, VP Business Development at Pelephone, gave an operator's view on mobile TV services. He described the Pelephone Zoom TV portal, which mixes video download, on-demand streaming and 21 live TV channels. Pelphone has found that prime time distribution in cellular TV is similar to regular TV, and that most users prefer music (31%), entertainment (29%), sports (11%) and news (10%).

Raimo Malila of Nokia Multimedia discussed the current fragmentation within the DVB-H standard between the DVB-CBMS and the OMA BCAST working group, especially on the issues of Electronic Service Guide (ESG) and content protection (conditional access and DRM).
Mr. Malila also described the possible business models for mobile broadcast TV, which are likely to be lead either by the broadcasters or the mobile operators. At the end of his speech, Mr. Malila presented a business case study for the roll out of a DVB-H network in Israel, claiming that the build-out cost to cover 95% of the population with in-door reception within 3 years would be 12.5M Euros, and the annual operating cost would be about 2-3M Euros per year.

Menno Bangma, Multimedia Services Consultant at TNO, described interative mobile services as a way to "push the portal" to the end-user, since they enable cross selling of content while watching TV, and create attractive opportunities for advertisers, such as impulse response, user feedback and user profile.

The conference concluded with an interesting panel session which gave some insights into the current challenges and roadmap for mobile TV services. The panel mentioned the following main constraints for the roll out of mobile TV services:
* Regulation and frequency aspects
* Standards fragmentation
* Echosystem (business model)
* Cheap terminals and multi-standard terminals (although there is a trade off between the two)

When asked about the best case scenario for mobile TV adoption, most panel participants replied that initial commercial services will be available within 18 months, and mass-market adoption is expected around 2008-2009.

3GSM 2006 Mobile TV Update - Part 3

To round up our 3-part summary of mobile TV news at 3GSM, Strategy Analytics published a new market research report on the topic of mobile TV, predicting that revenues from TV phone sales will increase form $8B in 2006 to $30B in 2010. The report also forecasts that DVB-H will account for 19% of TV phones in 2006, rising to 40% of the total TV phone market in 2010.

Not only phones will be able to receive mobile TV broadcasts, but portable game consoles as well. In a press conference in Tokyo yesterday, Nintendo said they will offer a mobile TV receiver card for the Nintendo GameBoy DS. The receiver will be available in Japan only, and will support the mobile ISDB-T broadcasts which are scheduled to begin in April.

And back to the good old TV-over-cellular services: Alcatel announced that T-Mobile has selected its technology to provide interactive mobile TV services over EDGE and 3G in the UK, Germany and Austria. Alcatel will be responsible for aggregating the live TV content, producing the mobile-specific channels, and hosting the service platform for all three countries from its centre in Stuttgart, Germany.

3GSM 2006 Mobile TV Update - Part 2

The stream of mobile TV announcements at 3GSM 2006 in Barcelona continues, with Nortel announcing its mobile TV solutions over HSDPA, MBMS and DVB-H networks. T-DMB keeps gaining momentum in Europe, with Samsung announcing that it is working with Bouygues Telecom, TF1 and VDL on a T-DMB trial in France that will start at the end of this month. Samsung is not betting on T-DMB alone: At 3GSM, Samsung is demonstrating 7 different Mobile TV handset models, supporting various combinations of T-DMB, S-DMB, DVB-H and MediaFlo. Samsung also surprised the mobile TV chip industry with an Announcement of its own DVB-H front-end solution, comprising of an RF CMOS tuner chip and a DVB-H Channel decoder which also support DVB-T.

While Samsung is a new player in DVB-H chips, DiBcom which is one of the more established players announced a joint reference design with NDS which implements Conditional Access for DVB-H receivers, complaint with the DVB CBMS standard. And still on the mobile TV chip front, Philips introduced the new version of their DVB-H receiver chip, which includes a tuner and a demodulator in a 7x7 mm package.

If we didn't have enough mobile TV standards already, Alcatel is proposing a combination of satellite-based and terrestrial-based DVB-H mobile TV broadcasting in the S-band, which is supposed to enable re-use of existing 3G base stations, and solve the frequency allocation problems of DVB-H in Europe. Interesting concept technically, but pulling together the whole value chain to support it (satellite operators, handset vendors, other network equipment vendors) will be quite difficult.

Stay tuned for more mobile TV news from 3GSM 2006...

3GSM 2006 Mobile TV Update - Part 1

Many sources have forecasted that mobile TV will be one of the hottest topics at 3GSM in Barcelona this year. And indeed, the show opened with some interesting news items. The first is a cooperation between Sony Ericsson and Nokia on DVB-H - the two companies announced that they cwill perform interoperability testing between Sony Ericsson's mobile handsets and Nokia's DVB-H network equipment.

The second item is the announcement by British Telecom, Virgin and Microsoft today regarding their plans to launch a commercial T-DMB service in the UK this year, following a successful trial. The big news is the addition of Microsoft to this party, since the company has so far been quite silent about its activities in the mobile broadcast TV market. The service was demonstrated at 3GSM on a mobile handset prototype designed by TTP and HTC. The design of the handset prototype, which runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and is powered by the NeoMagic MiMagic6+ multimedia processor, will also be licensed to other handset vendors.

I'll keep you updated on other Mobile TV news from 3GSM 2006 in Barcelona as it becomes available.