Standards, standards, everywhere; but nothing’s on mobile TV

Michael Hedges March 20, 2008

Forecasters, not just at Bear Sterns, anointed mobile TV the ‘next big thing’ sometime around the turn of the century. Each year since the high hopes for big money dwindle. Now mobile TV will be ‘interesting in some markets.’

EC Info Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding passed judgment on mobile TV a long time ago. She likes it and she wants it to work. More importantly she wants mobile TV to generate a good amount of revenue and a reasonable number of jobs.

Telecoms want mobile TV to work, too. With relentless downward pressure on pricing for their other services – like telephone service – telecoms want that ‘magic bullet.’ So far, only handset and systems manufacturers are making any money on mobile TV, not to forget lawyers and lobbyists who visit regulators.

Some broadcasters, more often in the public sector, want mobile TV to work. They have lots of content, ready made and, with ad revenues going to new media and license fee increases (mostly) on hold, there’s a nice opportunity for revenue sharing. So far, everybody’s winning; if not now, then sometime in the future.

And everybody would like to bring that future forward, just a bit.

To bring the mobile TV future forward, the focus in Europe, Asia and North America has been on standards, the system designs that turn pictures into ones and zeros and back into pictures again on mobile devices. Very smart young people have designed these clever systems. One is called DVB-H, Digital Video Broadcasting for Handheld. Others are DMB-T (Digital Multimedia Broadcast – Terrestrial) and MediaFlo. They all work. They are not compatible.

Commissioner Reding has championed DVB-H for Europe and wants the standards argument ended so all the manufacturers and telecoms can work from the same page. “For mobile TV to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the technology,” she said Monday (March 17). “This is why I am glad … the Commission in close coordination with the Member States and the European Parliament, the EU endorse DVB-H as the preferred technology for terrestrial mobile broadcasting.”

The reaction was muted, at best, primarily because the announcement was pre-ordained. In Europe’s two largest media markets – Germany and the UK – regulators are taking a very different approach. Let the market decide, they say; a sentiment echoed in the United States, which seems to be heading for an entirely different set of standards. So it is; markets are different. But Commissioner Redings’ drive for DVB-H will certainly ‘encourage’ national regulators and telecoms to adopt DVB-H. Not pushing DVB-H, she implied, might cause her to enact harder rules, like she did with roaming charges. Ouch!

None of this moves mobile TV the ‘last mile.’ Each year of this decade, typically about a year ahead of a major sporting event, mobile TV supporters (and their financial backers) display a study confirming that THIS will be the year. It hasn’t happened yet.

The forecast for 2012, said ABI Research in January 2008, is for 462 million subscribers worldwide, more than half in Asia. Datamonitor, in late 2005, expressed “concern” at “astronomical forecasts” for mobile TV; their forecast in 2007 for mobile TV subscribers was a more modest 155 million.

Gartner, a telecom consultant, forecast “close to a half billion subscribers worldwide” by 2010 in a report last year. But they cautioned telecom operators to “consider revenue models for mobile TV carefully. Mobile operators need to guarantee quality, variety and exclusivity to justify charging a premium for TV services and, in some cases, to justify charging for it at all.” 

That doesn’t sound like something to tell the investment bankers, if one can be found.

The UMTS Forum and the GSM Association, in a white paper titled ‘Mobile TV: The Groundbreaking Dimension’, pointed to the real mobile TV dilemma. It’s content that matters. Mobile TV should not, they report, simply be considered “conventional TV on the go.”

They go on to add that rights issues threaten “…to hold back the development of new content markets. This will affect different segments in different ways and can differ greatly from one country to another. Interoperability of TV content across boundaries could be challenged by the complexity of rules and regulation and could hinder mobile TV roaming.”

The mobile phone thrives on interoperable global standards. Commissioner Reding knows this. Interoperability is essential for mobile TV to reach a scalable business model. For any mobile TV business model to find a customer base new, different and compelling content needs to be created.

We’re still waiting.