The European Commission has ordered all 27 EU member states to 'privilege' DVB-H over other mobile TV technologies such as Qualcomm's MediaFLO and DMB. The reasons given for this decision were that it would 'end a war on standards' which could hold back the development of the mobile TV market in Europe. The Commission is also arguing that DVB-H is already becoming a de facto standard with support from heavyweight players including Nokia, Motorola, Philips, Sagem, Sony, Ericsson, Samsung as well as operators such as Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile International. Despite this support other vendors and operators are unhappy with the Commission's insistence on trying to mandate a European mobile TV standard. Qualcomm is unlikely to stop pushing MediaFLO although the fact that DVB-H is an open standard and the Qualcomm solution involves licence fees may be an inhibiting factor. MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) technology is another potential mobile TV solution with T-Mobile and Orange in the U.K. about to launch MBMS trials. As MBMS is part of the 3G standard developed by ETSI it is already effectively a European standard. EC telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding may find that nominating DVB-H is the easy part, getting operators and vendors to deploy the technology could prove more difficult.
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