Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Digital TV broadcasts to mobile arrive in Europe

Nine months after the first digital TV broadcasts to mobile phones started in Korea, now Three/Hutchison, the 3G mobile operator in Italy, has started the full broadcasts on the DVB-H technology. The story was reported by our friends at the3GPortal on Friday.

Initially Three/Hutchison do not offer the full channel selection, and have only 500 of the new handsets (which include the “set-top box” digital tuner built into the 3G mobile phone) to get the first customers viewing. But Hutchison promises to have all major Italian broadcast channels on by June, and aim to sign up a million 3G TV viewers by end of this year.

For those who are now remarkably confused (didn’t we have TV viewing on our 3G phones already?), this is a new technology and new type of viewing. Previously on mobile phones you could either watch video clips (download a clip, then watch it) or select a “streaming service” - which would at times cut out and be fuzzy etc. But now following the concept from Korea, the Italian mobile operator has launched handsets which have full 3G telecoms and data capacity - AND a separate digital tuner. The TV signals will be broadcast over the airwaves. This allows a much better - and more cost-effective TV viewing experience on the mobile phone (or other viewing device, such as the flat panel viewer on a backseat of an automobile etc). Of course it means that anyone offering this type of service also needs to own a TV broadcasting license, as Three/Hutchison does in Italy.

Again another variant on the “Y of Convergence” that Alan Moore and I talk about in our book, of how telecoms, the internet and media are merging.