According to Dow Jones Newswires, the European Commission has prepared a document in which it supports DVB-H as the standard of choice for mobile broadcast deployments across
A single standard aims at reducing market fragmentation. The Commission chose DVB-H over T-DMB and MediaFLO, two other solutions for mobile broadcasting, whose strongest promoters are outside
According to the article, the commission said it plans to add DVB-H to the list of standards published in its official journal, which should imply that EU countries are required to encourage the use of DVB-H.
Ovum senior analyst Vincent Poulbere comments:
The willingness of the EU to promote a single standard for mobile broadcast in
Let's start by asking what is the greatest barrier today to mobile broadcast deployments in the EU‾ The main barrier is the lack of spectrum in the UHF frequency band. Due to its current use for TV transmission, there is very little - or no - resource left in UHF for the deployment of mobile broadcast, and this situation is forecast to remain until the digital TV switch-over.
Many major industry players in
Based on the information we have, the EC's move does not address this critical issue of spectrum availability, and hence won't change much of the current situation of DVB-H in
DVB-H is already the preferred solution for mobile operators in four out of the five biggest EU countries:
Opting for a single standard is useless if there is no common spectrum available to deploy it. We believe the EC's effort should be focused on freeing frequencies in UHF to unlock the market potential.
Vincent Poulbere is a Senior Analyst in Ovum's global Consumer Practice