Mobile digital TV associations sign agreement

By Dan Butcher

December 12, 2008

Mobile digital TV is on the up and up

Various players in the mobile digital television ecosystem are coming together in an effort to speed mass-market adoption.

The Mobile DTV Alliance has formed a strategic liaison with the Broadcast Mobile Convergence Forum, known as bmcoforum, to better address the needs of key stakeholders in the expanding mobile digital TV market. The MDTVA also signed an agreement with the Global Certification Forum, or GCF.

"The bmcoforum and Mobile DTV Alliance will partner to promote mobile TV by exchanging documents of mutual interest," said Claus Sattler, executive director of the bmcoforum, Munich, Germany. "One topic is to align recommendations for implementation profiles to generate mass-market adoption."

The bmcoforum is an international nonprofit organization focused on developing an open market environment for mobile broadcast services.

The GCF is an active partnership between wireless carriers, device manufacturers and the test industry.

Japan has widespread adoption of mobile digital TV, with more than 25 million users

Implementation profiles are valid subsets of the feature set of standards and will be agreed between carriers, operating systems and handset vendors. They serve as a prioritization tool for initial implementations, such that interoperability with regard to the profile features can be maximized from the start during service launches.

The liaison and agreement reflect the broader mandate that the MDTVA adopted earlier this year to incorporate additional broadcast systems such as ATSC mobile/handheld, as well as its original commitment to DVB-H, with the goal of making mobile digital TV a mass-market service.

The liaison with the bmcoforum also provides the MDTVA an opportunity to build on the knowledge acquired by the bmcoforum through its extensive deployment and testing in mobile DTV markets outside North America.

The MDTVA has closely followed and evaluated mobile TV pre-launch interoperability profile activities in Europe which were overseen by the bmcoforum.

The MDTVA plans to leverage the bmcoforum's existing profiling processes and organizations and adapt the best practices put forward by the European market stakeholders.

In addition, the MDTVA has made public an agreement with the GCF to provide much-needed specifications for the mobile digital TV market.

The GCF will help provide a specifications suite for emerging mobile DTV technologies.

Also in accordance with their expanded mandate, the MDTVA announced the formation of technical working groups targeted to meet broadcaster needs at their recent members meeting in Washington.

One group is devoted to driving the interoperability profile of mobile digital TV technologies, in conjunction with the Advanced Television Systems Committee, or ATSC, an international, nonprofit organization developing voluntary standards for digital television.

A second group is focused on measuring audience metrics.

The third working group is concentrating on how best to leverage the audience data so that broadcasters may provide their clients more targeted advertising opportunities as well as interactive ads.

Telecommunications infrastructure provider Nokia Siemens Networks recently joined the Mobile DTV Alliance to help speed the global deployment of mobile digital TV (see story).

The Mobile DTV Alliance is an open industry consortium that selects and promotes the best practices and open standards to deliver premium-quality broadcast television to mobile devices in North America and globally.

Leading companies from across the mobile business system and entertainment value chain collaborate in the MDTVA.

Sponsor members include Disney, Microsoft, Nokia and SES Americom.

However, there are challenges facing the mobile digital TV space as the industry attempts to achieve mass-market adoption.

"Some of the success factors for mass-market adoption of mobile TV include frequency, availability, regulatory framework, cooperation of companies involved, content and handset choice," Dr. Sattler said.