A New Mode of In-band Mobile TV in Standard Digital TV Network

With extensive experience in developing receiver chips for digital terrestrial television (DTT) and mobile TV , Deacon CEO Yannick Levy suggested that mobile TV in Europe should be considered in conjunction with a new model called "in-band", which enables the simultaneous broadcast of mobile TV and digital terrestrial TV signals on the same network in France.

The Current Status of Digital Terrestrial Television and Mobile Television in France

The conversion of France from analogue to digital will be completed in late 2011, significantly increasing the coverage of digital terrestrial television both outdoors and indoors for the first time. Secondly, by the end of 2011, established broadcasters will realize cost savings of hundreds of millions of euros.

There are already some 20" LCD TVs available with DVB-T digital tuners costing less than 180 Euros, which will drive consumers to equip their homes with the new units, as has been the case in the US for many years (about 3 TVs per household), but DVB-T networks are still not strong enough to receive digital terrestrial TV signals in a mobile environment. Incumbent broadcasters are finding themselves facing strong competition from telecom operators and their vast content, which will lead to a decline in viewership after the switch-off of analogue TV broadcasts.

As for mobile TV, the situation has changed dramatically since 2005 due to the development of Wi-Fi. Now, many content providers offer streaming applications that provide good solutions for mobile TV applications in indoor environments. Therefore, the demand for mobile TV coverage indoors is no longer as important as it was thought when the mobile TV market was first analyzed.

Operators, broadcasters and manufacturers no longer believe in the business model of paid mobile TV. Numerous official sources from French mobile operators indicate that they are unwilling to invest in a pure mobile TV network because the potential saturation of 3G networks does not justify the investment. These operators prefer to eventually rely on broadcast 3G solutions such as IMB or wait for the ongoing development of LTE (Long Term Evolution) broadcast solutions. The same is true for broadcasters, who will not commit to funding mobile TV networks because the advertising model does not bring enough additional revenue to the business (given the precedent in South Korea).

For chip and handset manufacturers, they no longer believe in the business model of paid mobile TV, and the result is a small scale with very limited chances of commercial success. Elsewhere, mobile TV networks built specifically for mobile TV have never been commercially successful (DVB-H in Italy, Switzerland and Austria, T-DMB in Korea and Media-Flo in the United States). In contrast, hybrid DTV and mobile TV In-band mobile TV networks have been commercially successful, thanks to the technical possibility of in-band support provided by the ISBT-T standard, and this model is developing in Japan, Brazil and Argentina.

In-band mobile and fixed TV: a new paradigm

Taking all these factors into consideration, it is very important to create a new business model similar to Japan or South America in order to succeed in France and Europe. Decom believes that digital TV and mobile TV should be integrated in the same network.

There are two possibilities for achieving this convergence of digital and mobile television. The first is to increase the density of the digital terrestrial television network in 2011 by taking advantage of the cost savings from switching off analogue television, for example by enabling the DVB-T multiplex with more powerful modulation schemes. The second is to equip suburban areas with DVB-T or DVB-SH terrestrial repeaters, as well as satellite DVB-SH in towns, starting in 2011. This will allow the equipment to easily receive DVB-T in the UHF band and DVB-SH in the UHF band and S band, allowing reception inside and outside the city. Terminals equipped with such chips are already available. In the second scenario (no earlier than 2014), France could follow the DVB-T2 trend that originated in some European countries (UK, Sweden, etc.) and adopt a method to transmit a channel in HD or 3D mode simultaneously with the low-resolution signal to mobile receiving terminals. DVB-T2 is fully capable of transmitting in-band mobile television. However, the DVB-NGH standardization body has not yet completed the work of defining the exact parameters.

Now, all of these factors are coming together into a single model where receiving both digital TV and mobile TV simultaneously from a single network infrastructure via in-band mode will be very viable in the near term.