The European Commission's (EC) decision to back DVB-H as the mobile TV technology of choice has met with criticism in the industry which wants the market to decide which technology to use.
"There is a reason why the principle of technology neutrality exists and that is to ensure that the market can choose which technology delivers the most attractive solution for the consumer," said Dr Kamil Grajski, president of the FLO Forum industry body.
"Locking the European market into one technology model is potentially harmful to the growth of mobile broadcasting in Europe and will hinder the development of innovative technologies," Grajski added.
The EC will be adding DVB-H to "the EU's official list of standards and will thereby legally encourage its use in all 27 Member States". It will consider mandating its use in 2008, depending on market developments.
"[Europe] can either take the lead globally - as we did for mobile telephony based on the GSM standard - or allow other regions to take the lion's share of the promising mobile TV market," said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner. "'Wait and see' is not an option. The time has come for Europe's industry and governments to switch on to mobile TV."
Competing mobile TV technologies include DMB-T, DAB-IP and MediaFLO and the EC's decision could be detrimental to the backers of these.
"Each of these bearer formats has significant actors backing their adoption looking to generate revenue from their success," said Chris Khouri, associate analyst at Datamonitor.
"The move potentially comes as a blow to an industry led competitive marketplace. The market was expected to harmonise through technological innovation and chipset interoperability sometime in the near term."