DRM the Buzzword at CeBIT 2005
Michael Hedges March 20, 2005
No, not that DRM. Digital rights management means more APRU.
CeBIT 2005 in Hanover, Germany last week (March 9-15) may have been big – 7000 exhibitors – and slow – long lines queuing up for customer service – but nonetheless revealing. Mobile media, that lovely convergence between network operators and manufacturers, brought their biggest asset to show off: billing.
Technology trade shows are an experience in linguistics. No real languages are spoken, just buzzwords. Those bright young people at the tables and booths can speak entire sentences, entire sales pitches, using nothing but three and four letter acronyms.
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Digital rights management (DRM) standards now in place through the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) are designed to prevent what happened to the Internet from happening to the mobile platforms: free content. DRM standards, in process for a year and announced at the 3GSM World Congress in February, add a little fee to your mobile phone bill, less than €1 per handset, and another little fee, about 1% of the cost per downloaded item, file, thing, whatever. These little fees are paid to members of OMA, the biggest of the big ICT (tele-communications technology) companies for rights to their intellectual property. And as every telephone company knows, those little fees add up. Like those noxious ring-tones, every download increases the APRU – average revenue per user.
DRM standards go slightly farther. Like those annoying zone codes for DVD movies, DRM code can prevent transfer – without payment – from one device to another. Download a rare classic like Hüsker Dü’s “Candy Apple Grey” to your mobile phone - that would be a UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) mobile phone, or “terminal,” as they are properly called - and you can transfer that awesome piece of music to your PC. But don’t try sending it to your sister in Birmingham. Piracy, contrary to the public cries, is less significant to rights holders than access to distribution.
 Much of the buzz at CeBIT 2005 was about content on mobile platforms, billable content. Nokia recently launched a DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast – Handheld) trial in Helsinki, offering downloads of music and sports highlights. DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) broadcasters sense their ultimate salvation – a revenue stream – is within reach with music downloads to multiple platforms, the mobile phone being within reach as DAB radio receivers remain expensive and – largely – not very portable. 
Vodaphone – at their “Getting to know UMTS” display at CeBIT 2005 – pitched the possibilities of customized TV programs for the handset, sorry, mobile terminal, market. Virgin Radio can now be heard anywhere in the world via a UMTS phone. Sony Ericsson will brand their “music phone” as a Walkman.
The other buzz at CeBIT 2005 was VoIP, voice over internet protocol. The ICT sector continues atwitter at converging every possible device. Only a few years ago the buzz was digital radio over the web. Now it’s web over digital radio.
We await the publics’ decision.
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