One thing in this UnStrung that caught my eye was the statistic that 3 Italia now has more than 600,000 DVB-H customers. In March the figure given was 250,000. “The operator says the average revenue per user of its mobile TV subscribers is 60 percent higher than the Italian market average for mobile subscribers, which 3 Italia says ranges from €22 (US$30) to €26 ($35) per month.”

The article covered the difficult relationship between carriers and content producers: “Peter Bazalgette, chief creative officer at Endemol…quipped about a year ago that “working with mobile operators is like making love to a porcupine.” He now says that while the situation has improved, he is still looking for less prickly relationships with wireless carriers…But mobile operators could well say the same of content owners. When 3 Italia needed content for its DVB-H service, which it launched one year ago, just getting an appointment was difficult, says Alessandro Floris, mobile TV director at 3 Italia. “They would say, ‘maybe we could meet in a couple of years’.” However, the subtext of the story is that things are going in the right direction.