Sonia Sharma

Television is one of the most popular means of entertainment. It's no surprise then that the ability to provide TV on mobiles is being called a potential gold mine for service providers. Analysts including Frost & Sullivan and IDC predict that the mobile video market will exceed $1.5 bn by 2009.

There are a number of technological alternatives to provide mobile TV services. These include digital video broadcast-handheld (DVB-H), digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB), TDtv based on TD-CDMA technology from Qualcomm and MediaFLO. These technologies are still evolving and face issues like lack of appropriate business model, availability of spectral frequencies, signal strength, new infrastructure and network capacity.

Since early 2006, operators have initiated a number of trials to test these technologies.

DVB-H
DVB-H is a technical specification to bring broadcast services to handheld receivers. It adapts the DVB-T (digital video broadcast-terrestrial) system for the handheld, battery-powered receivers. It can offer a high data rate downstream channel which can be used standalone or as an enhancement of mobile telecoms networks. The time slicing technology can reduce power consumption for small handheld terminals.

The next generation of DVB-H is DVB-H+. It is a hybrid architecture which uses S band. Although S-DMB uses a similar technology in satellite radios,  DVB-H+ is expected to be more promising as it combines geostationary satellite with a terrestrial repeater.

Alcatel expects to deliver DVB-H+ terrestrial repeaters in 2007 and a DVB-H+ satellite-which  will cover Europe-in 2008.

In January 2006, Modeo announced that it would begin rolling out DVB-H services in the US this year. Meanwhile, Italia and Telecom Italia Mobile have launched these services in Italy. In the UK, the network operator, Arqiva, carried out a successful DVB-H trial in Oxford with 16 linear TV services including BBC.

In India, Doordarshan will launch its DVB-H service in the latter part of 2006. It will be able to show all the four national channels on mobile using this technology. Doordarshan had also launched DD News in moving vehicles in Delhi through the digital video broadcasting to terrestrials (DVB-T).

DMB
Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) is another option to provide mobile TV services. It has two forms: S-DMB which operates via satellite and T-DMB which stands for terrestrial transmission.

South Korea started S-DMB and T-DMB service in May 1 and December 1, 2005, respectively. As of April 2006, T-DMB service in South Korea consists of seven TV, 13 radio and eight data channels, while S-DMB service includes seven TV and 20 radio channels. Germany has already launched a T-DMB commercial service for the World Cup 2006. France is running a trial in Paris. Switzerland and Italy are prepaparing a trial for 2006. UK and China plan to launch commercial services in mid 2006.

Meanwhile, India has benefited from bilateral relations with Korea. The Korean broadcasting commission (KBC) presented the DMB technology in India in February this year. The Korean minstry of information and communication has tied up with TRAI, Tata group and Bharti Aietel to hold T-DMB trials in India.

MediaFLO
MediaFLO is another such technological option developed by Qualcomm to broadcast data to portable devices such as cellphones and PDAs. The FLO stands for Forward Link Only allowing data transmission in only one direction, from the tower to the device.

LG and Samsung introduced MediaFLO-compatible devices in 2006. In December 2005, Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm together had announced to launch the MediaFLO network. Verizon Wireless expects to deploy MediaFLO in half of its 1xEV-DO markets in the US in 2006.

It is evident that the industry is upbeat about mobile TV services. There are issues such as content security and storage, device functionality, battery life, and screen watchability. Once they are dealt with, mobile TV is sure to emerge as one of the most popular services of the future.

   Report sourced from www.ciol.com