EU Likely to Oppose Single Format for Mobile TV Services

BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- The European Commission's attempt to propose Nokia's DVB-H technology as the official E.U standard for mobile television, is likely to be watered down by European governments, according to a draft document seen by Dow Jones Newswires.

European telecommunication ministers are Thursday expected to say that a market-led approach for deciding which technology should become the mobile TV standard is preferable at such an early age of the technology's development.

The view of the ministers will come as a blow to E.U. Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding, who has been urging national governments and industry to take up DVB-H as the European standard for mobile TV, handsets offering television.

The commission, the European Union's executive arm, has backed the DVB-H standard as the "strongest contender" for future mobile television broadcasts, despite there being other options, to avoid market fragmentation.

Other technologies for mobile TV include Qualcomm's FLO platform, known as MediaFLO, which has gained ground in the USA, and ISDB-T technology, which is the standard in Japan and Brazil.

Mobile TV could give the telecom, media and software industries a significant economic boost but "we won't get there without a single official EU standard," Reding warned at a conference in Hungary Tuesday.

While governments won't reject DVB-H completely, they are likely to say that DVB-H should be a non-mandatory standard.

The global market for mobile TV could reach EUR20 billion by 2011, the commission predicts.

Naming a single standard is more common in Europe than the USA, and is usually done to ensure interoperability across countries.

In the early 1990s, E.U. regulators selected the GSM standard for mobile phones, making the devices compatible across the bloc. This helped the mobile industry develop more rapidly in Europe than in the U.S., which has several competing standards.

-By Peppi Kiviniemi, Dow Jones Newswires; +3227411483; peppi.kiviniemi@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

Posted to the site on 27th November 2007