The DVB-H standard for mobile TV is predicted to win out against the other standards by industry experts speaking at the 3GSM World Congress 2006.
Services are expected to be rolled out in time for the World Cup.
“DVB-H is going to be the big one. The prediction is it’s going to have 40-50 per cent of the market,” said Berardino Baratta, a general manager at Freescale Semiconductor. “The traditional operators are going to license access.”
Competing with DVB-H are Korea’s DMB-T based on DAB digital radio, Qualcomm’s MediaFlo and TV over the mobile phone network.
Terry Yen, senior director marketing at Qualcomm, believes all the technologies can compete. “There’s room in the industry for more than one standard,” he said.
“If you look at the industry, historically, it won’t really slow things down. The world has room for multiple standards.”
Yen said he was not sure all the competing standards would survive, but pointed to the current variety of mobile technologies and said that one chip could support all the mobile TV standards.
Gertjan Kaat, senior vice-president for mobile and personal at Philips Semiconductors, thought that, in future, there would be fewer technologies. “DVB-H is by far supported by the biggest community, it has the highest support,” said Kaat, who believes the mobile phone network will not be able to cope with TV.
“There’s a belief in the market that 3G and EDGE can have video-on-demand, but the base stations won’t be able to handle the capacity,” said Freescale’s Baratta. “All the next-generation technologies have to be good at voice; and DVB-H as a separate network doesn’t risk voice.”
www.freescale.com
www.qualcomm.com
www.semiconductors.philips.com