Which Mobile TV technology to go for?

There is aa lot of confusion regarding which mobile TV technology to go for. An article in Telecoms Online gives an idea regarding which way the Chinese market is going for mobile TV.



A recent survey shows more than 40 percent of cell phone users in China like the idea of watching TV on handsets. Some pundits even predict the number of mobile TV users in China will jump to nearly 60 million in 2008, and revenue from handset sales and programming will generate 1.3 billion yuan (US$170m).

The road to mobile TV, however, most likely will be bumpy. Current trials have found several vulnerabilities, such as handset display hang-up when video content is loaded, short battery life and overheating, that must be fixed.

What’s really hindering mobile TV development in China (and, arguably, in other geographical regions), however, is lack of agreement on one standard. In June, a government agency overseeing the mobile TV industry reaffirmed CMMB (China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting) as the official standard for 3G video service. The reason: CMMB is homegrown and completely free of foreign IPRs.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and TV developed CMMB last October, but a tug-of-war over the standard has undermined SARFT’s efforts to implement it this year. Despite a slow start, SARFT has obtained 25MHz in bandwidth on 2.5GHz for CMMB service and plans to build networks for the Olympics in six cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao.

The other contenders CMMB must fight are DVB-H (Europe), Media-FLO (United States), T-DMB (Korea), DMB-TH (a digital TV spec modified for handheld developed by Tsinghua University), T-MMB (Nufrontsoft, which is aligned with MII, the Chinese telecom regulatory body) and CMB (Huawei).

For now, CMMB appears to be most appealing because of SARFT backing. SARFT’s control of programming and distribution in China gives CMMB a huge regulatory and cost advantage over rival mobile TV standards.
Recognizing that CMMB has clout in China, a large industry alliance of 120 companies backs the standard, including heavyweights such as Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, and Chinese firms like Lenovo, Huawei and ZTE.

One of the main benefits of CMMB, according to SARFT, is that it does not charge royalties for two years, saving an estimated 1 billion yuan (US$130m) in foreign IPR payments. SARFT hopes the savings will encourage handset manufacturers to cooperate in perfecting the standard and expediting proliferation.

There are other concerns. Some Chinese standards are not really independent but a hodgepodge of foreign versions. Reports say T-MMB, developed by Nufrontsoft, incorporates certain core DAB patents like DMB that will be in effect until 2013. Critics say if Chinese handset makers adopt T-MMB they will have to dole out hefty royalties–about US$6 per set or up to US$120m to US$300m per year.

CMMB and T-MMB use different approaches to video transmission and delivery. T-MMB uses a streaming overlay on top of mobile infrastructure, so that it shares the total bandwidth and download speed for the service, like the current video service. CMMB relies on a tuner installed in the handset to receive video signals over the air.

The T-MMB advocates say adding a tuner will compromise other features affecting handset and overall performance, while the CMMB supporters predict T-MMB will be dead on arrival because video traffic will crash the network and cost will skyrocket.

The debate over mobile TV standards is not just about patriotism and technology. SARFT has jurisdiction over broadcasting via various media outlets, including handheld devices, while T-MMB is a brainchild of MII which, by default, only provides a transmission conduit to end users but not content and distribution.

The problem is that both sides see mobile TV as a golden opportunity but want to run the market on their own terms. At this time, the central government sees it as a market issue and is reluctant to provide guidelines, so tussle over mobile TV probably will go on for some time before technical issues are straightened out.

BT Movio ... going ... going ... gone

UK national telecommunication company British Telecom (BT) has closed its mobile broadcast branch BT Movio. The delivery platform developed by BT Movio supports the only mobile broadcast TV service in the UK. The service is retailed by UK largest mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Virgin Mobile. The operator declared that the service will carry on until the beginning of next year. BT has cancelled its contract with GCap Media which provided access to the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) spectrum. GCap mentioned that the cancellation will take effect on 9 June 2008. GCap subsidiary Digital One which is in charge of the spectrum is currently seeking other partners to replace BT Movio.

Virgin had released only one handset — the HTC-manufactured "Lobster phone" — which supported the technology, and sales of that device were poor. The Lobster phone was seen by critics as an unattractive handset and, being based on Windows Mobile, it was not ideally suited to the consumer sector.

However, the final straw for BT was the recent backing given by the European Commission to the mobile broadcast technology Digital Video Broadcasting — Handheld (DVB-H). BT Movio was based on the rival Digital Audio Broadcasting — IP (DAB-IP) standard, which reused digital radio spectrum to deliver a handful of TV channels and a range of digital radio stations. DVB-H promises more channels, but spectrum availability for that technology had looked uncertain until it became apparent last week that the European Commission would force member states to adopt the standard.

According to screendigest:

Unicast mobile TV (i.e. distributed through 3G networks) has been relatively successful in the UK with three major operators launching services with more than 25 TV channels on average. According to Screen Digest, they were almost 450,000 mobile TV subscribers at the end of 2006. While unicast mobile TV can offer a wide range of TV content, the infrastructure can only sustain a limited number of users. In order to support mass market adoption mobile broadcast TV networks must be deployed. BT Movio launched the broadcast mobile TV service with Virgin Mobile in September 2006. The service showed poor uptake during the first 3 months with less than 10,000 subscribers. Factors blamed for the poor uptake include a lack of content and poor handset availability. The upcoming UK auction for L-Band spectrum could have given BT Movio the opportunity to increase the capacity of the current platform and improve the channel line-up. However, the BT Movio platform requires IP compatibility from the broadcast network technology. DVB-H, DAB and MBMS support IP encapsulation. T-DMB, the preferred technology for the L-Band spectrum auction, does not support IP. Therefore, BT Movio was stuck with a platform which cannot draw enough attention from mobile operators, handset manufacturers and inevitably mobile subscribers.

The UK operator '3' is keen to big up its own mobile TV and video services in the wake of BT's announcement. 3 UK says its customers have:

• Downloaded more than a million reality TV clips in the last year.
• Downloaded over a million SeeMeTV clips every month, with £100,000 being made by budding directors in the process.
• Last summer watched World Cup TV on their mobiles nearly 4 million times.

Among the live streamed channels 3 offers are BBC1, BBC3 and ITV1, with access starting at 49p a day. Its also allows customers to access TV from their set-top's with a Slingbox app.

OMA seeks to ease mobile TV pain

The Open Mobile Alliance's recently-unveiled BCAST Enabler specification is designed to create a 'write once, run anywhere' environment' for broadcasters and other content providers. The spec - if widely adopted - could have significant implications for the concept of mobile TV 'roaming'.

In theory, it means broadcasters will be able to deploy their programming across the whole gamut of broadcast mobile TV platforms - DVB-H, DVB-SH, DMB, DAB-IP, ATSC-M/H etc - with little or no tweaking.

Because it works with any IP-based content delivery technology BCAST Enabler can also be used for the delivery of programming across cellular systems like 3GPP MBMS, 3GPP2 BCMCS and mobile unicast streaming systems, such as 3G streaming.

What benefits will OMA BCAST offer broadcasters and broadcast network operators?

• The specification enables broadcast-only mode for delivering services. It also allows broadcast-only terminals and free-to-air content with service and content protection capability.

• The specification is agnostic to access network meaning that the same service offering can be delivered over broadcast channel, interaction channel or both. Being agnostic to underlying architecture allows integration of the broadcast offering with operators or independent delivery over the interaction channel, which is controlled by broadcaster.

• Service interactivity is well specified and caters for broad range of services including interactive and direct feedback from viewers. Also, the service interactivity is not bound to the cellular channel – WLAN or a similar network can also be used. The use of the interaction channel allows personalization of services and service guides.

• The Service Guide enables the broadcaster to associate broadcast
programming with on-demand content. In addition, it supports both broadcast and on-demand delivery of the Service Guide itself.

What benefits will OMA BCAST offer terminal manufacturers?

• The Mobile TV Enabler specifies features for a common TV & video service layer that are currently not addressed by other specifications but still needed to ensure interoperability for large-scale terminal availability.

• Enables economies of scale by leveraging same technologies for both
broadcast and interactive channels. This means vendors can build an
economically viable terminal base that can be used by operators/carriers or broadcasters or jointly by both.

Things our phone will do in next 10 years

Interesting article in Cnet on "10 things your mobile will do in next 10 years"

1. Wallet: This would be quite cool when available. Have been hearing about this for years now. Apparently very popular in Japan and S.Korea where people are not using credit cards anymore and instead using Phones.

A much better idea would be to have a universal recognition kind of chip which i can use as Credit card, Smart Card for Trains (In london we have Oyester cards) and then i can use this for accessing company door, garage door , etc. This would be a real killer app but doesnt look like will happen in near (or far) future

2. Internet: In December, ABI Research said that almost 50 million people used social-networking sites on their mobile phones. That number is expected to grow to 174 million by 2011. It would be cool to be able to browse using your phone. Mosst of the sites i use (including mine) are not mobile friendly and this is the thing that is turning people off the net.

3. Location: Already too many phones supporting GPS and A-GPS. The chips are becoming cheaper with cost of around $5 so the manufacturers should have no problem. In future we will get disscounted packages where we will have to receive adverts which would be location specific. Nokia has some applications which can compete with TomTom for getting directions, etc.

4. Search: Hardly anything needs to be mentioned for this.

5. TV: Have written enough on Mobile TV already. IMS Research forecasts that by 2011 there will be more than 30 million mobile TV subscribers in the United States. The firm also predicts that almost 70 million handsets capable of receiving mobile TV will be shipped in the U.S. in 2011.

6. Simplified surfing: From the Cnet article

Ever notice how many clicks it takes to find the one thing you're looking for on your phone? It's worse than counting how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. But handset makers and mobile operators are
hard at work trying to make phones easier to navigate and simpler to use.

The upcoming iPhone from Apple is a perfect example of how user interfaces will be improved. Apple fans are confident that the company has come up with another slick and intuitive
design, just as it did for the iPod.

One aspect of the iPhone's interface that has been publicized is its use of sensory technology to detect when the device is rotated. This allows the phone to automatically render pictures on the screen in portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal) format. That allows the user to determine which format is best for viewing whatever is on the screen, be
it a Web page, video, or photo.

In the future, motion-sensing technology, similar to that used in the Nintendo Wii game console, will also allow people to navigate their cell phone menus or the mobile Internet
with a flick of their wrists.

But motion sensing is just one piece of the puzzle. Operators such as Verizon Wireless are redesigning their content menus
to reduce the number of clicks users must endure to find what they want. Ryan Hughes, vice president of digital media programming for Verizon Wireless, said he believes that user interfaces will be customizable so that users can decide
for themselves which applications will be displayed on their phones most prominently.

Motorola is already offering a customizable interface on the
Razr 2, which the company claims will make searching for contacts, accessing applications, and messaging much easier.

7. Brainier radios: Maybe in future SDRs (Software Defined Radios) may become more common and popular and yes the technology will become feasible. Also multiple radios on the chpset would mean Handovers will be possible from 3G to WiMax, Wifi, etc.

8. Personal Cell: Everyone seems to be talking of Femtocell. Where we will have a small 3G base station in our home. We could use it for Voice or High Speed data. No need for the POTS and use mobile for everything. This will still take some time as the operators dont fully understand the benefits of offering cheap data.

9. Perfect Camera: Today roughly 41 percent of American households own a camera phone. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to buy a phone today that doesn't have a camera. By 2010 more than 1 billion mobile phones in the world will ship with an embedded camera, up from the 589 million camera phones that are expected to be sold in 2007, according to market research firm Gartner.

10. More music on the phone: Mobile phone users around the globe are expected to spend $32.2 billion on music for their handsets by 2010, up from $13.7 billion in 2007, according to Gartner. This can only happen when Music Video/Audio becomes cheaper though. Personally i would prefer listening to FM Radio rather than music but i am not sure how much demand there would be and ofcourse the operators dont gain anything.

Mobile TV in Top Ten of mobile services

From the Nokia N-Series Blog:

In a report published by Analysis, the global advisers on telecoms, IT and media, Mobile TV shows up in the Top ten most used non voice services on mobile phones.

This new report identifies the top ten services from a large number of non-voice services worldwide, and provides detailed case studies and analysis of these leading services to help others replicate their success. The report provides unique guidance to mobile operators (as well as MVNOs and third party service providers) on the best opportunities to increase their non-voice service revenues.

1. Vodafone’s Casa FASTWEB DSL service (Italy)

2. O2’s SMS service (UK)

3. 3’s 3G mobile TV and video streaming service (UK)

4. T-Mobile’s BlackBerry email and instant messaging service (USA)

5. Sprint Nextel’s CDMA2000 EV-DO Revision A mobile broadband service (USA)

6. 3’s DVB-H mobile TV broadcasting service (Italy)

7. KDDI au’s EZ Chaku-uta Full music downloading service (Japan)

8. SK Telecom’s Cyworld Mobile community portal service (South Korea)

9. NTT DoCoMo’s DCMX mobile credit service (Japan)

10. Vodafone’s MiniCall ‘voice SMS’ service (Egypt)

Mobile TV services are a key element of the 3G service mix that has enabled 3 UK to claim non-voice ARPU of more than USD25 per month, which is currently the highest in the world”, says Dr Mark Heath, co-author of the report.

“In Italy, mobile TV subscribers of 3’s DVB-H service generate 60% higher ARPU than its other mobile customers. While some mobile TV services, such as Virgin Mobile’s DAB-IP service in the UK, are making slow progress, 3 shows that it is possible to make a short-term success of mobile TV.”

Mobile TV and MBMS will co exist

Someone brought my attention towards a Digitimes article where some people from Israel-based mobile chip designer Siano Mobile Silicon are talking about Mobile TV and MBMS. Some of the interesting points below.

Q: And what about multicast?

A: (Jashek) Again, multicast will end up placing a strain on the system bandwidth. The current MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) capacity is limited to 2Mb/sec, while a broadcast system will provide bandwidth of 16-32Mb/sec, which is the bandwidth needed to support about 20 channels. Upgrading any existing cellular network so that it supports MBMS at 15-20Mbps (while not hurting the voice capabilities of the network) requires an investment that is by far larger than building a good mobile TV broadcast system.

We believe video-over-cellular services such as MBMS will continue to exist, but will gradually focus on “on demand” services, while actual mobile TV services will use a broadcast platform.
(Raab) Content will be broadcast to users, but users will be involved in the content, such as in programs that involve voting. And the way to create profits from this is to get more people involved in the service and bundling services to increase the amount of data that is going through the network, but in such a way that it does not strain the system.

Q: But who will build the broadcast infrastructure? Do you expect broadcasters and cellcos to be competitors or partners?

A: (Jashek) Most operators are facing the question of whether they should invest themselves or whether they should partner with a broadcaster to develop the infrastructure. In Italy, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) has deployed a mobile TV service where it is the service provider, even though Mediaset (a broadcaster) built the primary broadcast infrastructure. On the other hand, 3-Italia have made their own investment into a DVB-H network, and they enjoy a very good attach rate.

In the US, Qualcomm's subsidiary MediaFLO has solved this dilemma for the operators by building the network itself. The only thing Verizon or Cingular had to do was sign a contract with Qualcomm and offer the service.

Thus, different models exist. The relationship between broadcasters and cellcos will be one of the key issues affecting the success of mobile TV in the future. Most broadcasters already have the spectrum, as well as the content. They are currently using that for analog terrestrial TV, but in the future it will be used for digital mobile TV. However, cellcos already have a network that supports interactive programming. They also have an infrastructure in place for service and billing.

The question is how well can cellcos and broadcasters get along. What TIM has done, is take revenues from its mobile TV service and split it evenly with the broadcaster. In the future, we expect to see a similar type of model where broadcasters focus on broadcast services and operators focus on interacting with the customer.

Q: You mentioned that current analog TV spectrum will be allocated to mobile TV in the future. Can you add more color to that statement and explain how that will affect the development of the mobile TV market?

A: (Jashek) I should note that the development of mobile TV will go hand in hand with the migration of terrestrial analog TV to digital TV. For example, if you look at the DVB standard (DVB-T for terrestrial TV and DVB-H for mobile TV), which will be the DTV standard deployed in the most markets worldwide, currently about 30 countries have DVB-T networks, while another 30 will join in one to three years. Once the DVB-T networks are in place, you will see huge growth in DVB-H support because it does not take much investment to add DVB-H support to a DVB-T network.

Getting back to your specific question, a lot of countries have allocated spectrum to mobile TV on a temporary basis. Once governments start turning off their analog services in 2010, that spectrum will be allocated to mobile TV on a more permanent basis, and you will see a big jump in the size of the market.

We expect to see 120-130 million mobile TV users worldwide by 2010, with DVB-H being the number one platform. By 2012-2013 when more markets switch off their analog services, we expect to see 300-400 million people enjoying broadcast mobile TV.

Q: As you mentioned, DVB-H will be deployed in the most markets, however the global mobile TV market remains fragmented. Can you comment on the implications of how such a fragmented global market might affect the development of mobile TV?

A: (Raab) Obviously, with the huge expected size of the mobile TV market, a lot of different organizations would like to have a piece of the pie. Hence, a number of broadcast mobile TV technologies have been developed. Eventually, economy of scales will not allow more than about four technologies to survive in large volumes. It looks like the partitioning will be geographical.
(Jashek) DVB-H has its stronghold in Europe, where it was originally pushed by local players such as Nokia and Philips, and where DVB-T, the "mother" of DVB-H, has strong momentum. We have no doubt that DVB-H will dominate mobile TV in Europe, and DVB-T will also be supported on some hand-held devices. DVB-H is also expected to be the dominant standard in Southeast Asia – Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia – and the Pacific Rim. In countries with vast rural areas, such as Russia or Canada, we expect that, around 2010-2011, DVB-H will be unified with DVB-SH (the satellite version of DVB-H). This will optimize the coverage with respect to the infrastructure investment required.

MediaFLO seems to be the winner in North America, although we would not be surprised if DVB-H will also be deployed there.

In Japan, as well as Brazil and a couple other South American countries, ISDB-T will dominate. And South Korea will continue with its T-DMB for some time, although being the only nation to have large-scale deployment of this standard will make it difficult for Korea to maintain it for many years. In China, the homegrown standard known as CMMB (S-TIMI) will be the main platform for mobile TV.

(Raab) Another thing to remember is that not only are the standards fragmented but so is spectrum support.

With the big picture being so unclear, device makers are looking for help to develop a solution that fits as many markets as possible. That’s why three years ago Siano came up with the concept of a multi-standard and multi-band mobile TV chip solution.

Our chips currently support the DVB-H/T, DAB and T-DMB standards, as well as covering the VHF, UHF, L1 (1450-1490MHz) and L2 (1660-1680MHz) spectrums. In addition, we will very soon have ISDB-T supported, while CMMB and MediaFLO are also on our roadmap. We are members of the CMMB working group, and the FLO Forum.

Q: Several mobile TV trials have been hampered by a lack of handset support, why is that?

A: (Raab) Handset makers need to digest and endorse a new technology – new types of antennas, receiver chips, software, etc. This is not easy. Some of the first few DVB-H phones were bulky, use antennae that were too long (making them unacceptable for most users), and have a reception sensitivity that was not that great.

The above diagram is from a Vodafone presentation ( Mobile TV from pure Broadcast to Interactivity, 19th Oct 2006 ). It shows how Mobile TV technologies will coexist with MBMS and the traditional unicast services

The rise of Mobile TV (18/05/07)

Have been slightly busy reccently working towards my new training on MBMS. While searching for some statistics i came accross this interesting report:

According to Infonetics research report titled, “Mobile Video Devices, Services and Subscribers” published in May 2007:

• The number of worldwide mobile subscribers has increased by 300% between 2005 and 2006.
• There will be 46 million Mobile Video subscribers by 2010
• Asia Pacific will be the regional stronghold of mobile video subscribers through at least 2010, with 57 per cent of the world total in 2006, followed by EMEA at 31 per cent
• The number of mobile video handsets sold worldwide nearly doubled from 2005 to 2006 (including video-capable handsets not necessarily tied to a specific mobile video service)
• Mobile video service ARPU (average revenue per user) in all regions increases significantly from 2006 to 2010, tripling in Asia Pacific (from a low base) and more than doubling in CALA

It remains to be seen how users will usse the mobile TV once the novelty wears off.