We’ll surely be hearing about this struggle for some time to come now…regulaors and conent providers in Europe, especially Germany, as trying to figure out which mobile TV standard to use: DVB-T, DVB-H or the Korean model with DMB.
DVB-T, which is scheduled to cover 95 percent of Germany by 2010, was in any case not designed for interactive TV, say analyts…Now the question is whether to build a network with another standard, DVB-H, or whether to use the DMB standard that South Korea uses. Both standards have similar capabilities.
Klaus Illgner, managing director of Germany’s Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik (IRT), the public broadcasters’ research institute, says the problem will be to thrash out a business model between content providers, infrastructure suppliers and mobile operators. “Who gets how much of the cake?”
In Europe, Illgner says, Finland is probably closest to having a functioning mobile television system, with Germany striving to build something that can at least be demonstrated by next year’s soccer World Cup.