Frost & Sullivan has reiterated its belief that DVB-H will become the dominant mobile TV technology in Europe…given a few years. It said the same thing five months ago and I guess can only be encouraged by recent EU moves to free up spectrum for the technology. The reason given for the success of DVB-H is the backward integration with DVB-T, the current digital TV standard.
“The fight for the mobile TV standard in Europe will be won not by the first standard introduced in the market, but by the most efficient, economical and future-ready one, even if it (DVB-H) is a few years down in line,” explains Frost & Sullivan ICT Industry Analyst Pranab Mookken. “DVB-H is likely to become the European standard and delivery mechanism for mobile TV in Europe by 2010 as it perfectly complements the existing digital TV standard and is likely to solve the spectrum allocation issues in the preferred UHF band.”
The completion of migration from analogue to digital standards across Europe will create demand for the DVB-H UHF spectrum. Due to its synergies and ability to backward integrate with its fixed terrestrial counterpart digital video broadcast-terrestrial (DVB-T), DVB-H is the only standard having the capacity to accommodate the mature mobile TV market of the future. Also, the availability of DVB-H UHF spectrum coincides with the period when existing 3G operators in Europe would be nearing subscription maturity on their cellular networks and looking to migrate their video services to a complimentary network for the future.
Mookken did say that carriers might use DAB and T-DMB as a stop-gap measure until they can deploy DVB-H, but argues that “DVB-H is the only standard having the capacity to accommodate the mature mobile TV market of the future”. It has more capacity than the DMB solutions but not more than MediaFLO, which wasn’t mentioned in the release.
Related stories:
–Vodafone Germany To Offer DVB-H Service In 2007
–DMB To Be Test Launched In Germany
–Alcatel Proposes Satellite DVB-H
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