I see the European Commission is having another bash at encouraging the mobile TV industry in Europe to standardise on DVB-H. Various opinions abound, including one that this is fact a climbdown from a previous promise to get proscriptive now, rather than maybe in a year's time.
Maybe someone in Brussels has had a sudden attack of commonsense and realised that best standard to follow for mobile TV is not to bother in the first place. There's no massmarket demand, no obvious business model, and lots of better things to do with the spectrum. Sure, there are probably a few specific niches for mobile TV to be successful, but the idea that 10's or 100's of millions of people in Europe are going to be subscribing to them and watching avidly is pure fantasy.
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The operators are frantically looking for the killer application for 3G, and we've all had to suffer through a long succession of failed attempts to find it. We had WAP, MMS and then video calling. I don't think I even know anyone that's ever actually made a real video call...
ReplyDeleteBut it totally bemuses me that the operators still think mobile TV could be their killer application. It's even more unlikely to succeed than video calls.
Do the people making this stuff up bother to go out into the real world and see how people actually use handsets?
I agree, it's puzzling ... and an irony that, having helped to create a global winner in GSM and its derivatives (WCDMA, HSPA, LTE, etc …), the EU should be so keen to propose the use of a separate overlay network for mobile TV services.
ReplyDelete3G operators are already gauging the market for interactive mobile TV services, using their existing networks and currently available handsets.
Of course, I have an axe to grind here (as we are heavily involved in deployment of streamed on-demand video over 2.5G GPRS as well as over 3G) but I really do believe that simply 'simulcasting' linear TV in full to mobiles and expecting punters to pay to receive it is flawed in the extreme.
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