EU Endorses Proposal to Set DVB-H as Standard for Mobile TV in Europe

November 29, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

• Promoting the use of DVB-H as the mobile TV standard for Europe.
• Putting in place a joint approach to the licensing of mobile TV in order to accelerate the rollout of services and to encourage innovative business models.
• Making available the radio spectrum for these services, possibly in the UHF-frequency band.

Next steps will now include the preparation of guidelines for authorisation procedures and the addition of DVB-H to the official list of standards whose use all 27 EU member states have to support and encourage.

This proactive European strategy for mobile TV aims at giving European consumers the benefits of television everywhere and anytime, as is increasingly the case in Asia and the U.S. It also gives content creators, broadcasters, service providers and hardware manufacturers the certainty they need to roll out mobile TV services across Europe in 2008.

"European mobile TV is a step closer to success following today's endorsement by the Council of the EC's strategy for creating economies of scale in this important sector," said Viviane Reding, EC commissioner for information society and media.

"This shows that political resolve and market developments are in tune to ensure this potentially multi-billion Euro market is on the right track by mid-2008. I welcome the support received today for the EC's mobile TV strategy and, by a strong majority of member states, also for DVB-H."

Reding added, "At the same time, I call also on the minority of governments who are still reluctant, partly for internal reasons, to endorse DVB-H as European standard to join the majority quickly. The more member states participate actively, the better Europe will be in achieving the required critical mass to become a world leader in mobile TV."

In July, the EC proposed a strategy for promoting mobile TV across Europe (see IP/07/1118, MEMO/07/298). It included the use of the open standard DVB-H - which has been developed by European industry, partly with the support of European research funds - as the common standard for terrestrial mobile TV across Europe. This proposal has already led to an irreversible trend in the market towards DVB-H as the preferred European standard for mobile TV, while other parts of the world are also backing this open standard of the DVB family.

DVB-H was developed by the open Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Consortium. It is part of a family of interoperable standards that dominate digital broadcasting around the world, together with DVB-S for digital satellite TV, DVB-C for digital cable TV and DVB-T for digital terrestrial TV.

Following the council meeting on Nov. 30, DVB-H will be published by the EC in the list of official EU standards. As a result, all EU member states will have to support and encourage the use of DVB-H for the launch of mobile TV services, thus avoiding market fragmentation and allowing economies of scale and accordingly affordable services and devices.

In addition, the EC intends to work closely with EU member states in the coming months on the authorisation and licensing regimes and, together with industry, to look at issues such as service layer interoperability and right management applied to mobile TV.

The EC is strongly committed to the success of mobile TV, which could be a market of up to €20 billion by 2011, reaching some 500 million customers worldwide. The EC considers 2008 to be a crucial year for mobile TV take-up in the EU due to important sports events, such as the European Football Championship and the Summer Olympic Games, which will provide a unique opportunity for raising consumer awareness and for the adoption of new services.

Today, South Korea and Japan alone have 20 million mobile TV customers, more than 30 times the number of users in the EU. These competitors have undertaken massive efforts to promote their own single standards around the globe, threatening one of Europe's most promising industries.

To date, DVB-H has been commercially launched in Italy and Finland, with trials in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, France, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.

Source: European Commission.