Nokia Hits Back At “Wrong Horse” Allegations

Nokia has hit back at claims it is backing the wrong horse in the mobile broadcast TV race, the comments made by British incumbent BT, which is planning a mobile TV service based on DAB technology.

“We looked at the two technologies years ago and decided to focus on DVB-H because it’s the best technology, particularly when it comes to broadcasting multiple channels,” Mark Selby, Nokia’s vice president of rich media and music, told vnunet.com. “As for the claim that we are supporting the standard because we build DVB-H infrastructure, that’s just wrong. We don’t build DVB-H networks. We, on purpose, have nothing to do with it. It’s an open third-party market because we believe in open standards.”

DVB-H has a huge challenge in the UK because the spectrum it requires isn’t due to be released until 2012, but apparently “several comments at recent conferences have indicated that this date might well be brought forward”.
Of course the other issue is that Nokia is selling equipment to the world, not just the UK, so it has got a lot more to take into consideration than UK’s bandwidth issues…

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