Making the DVB-SH trials work for mobile TV

Last Friday, Alcatel-Lucent announced it would trial the new hybrid satellite-terrestrial mobile broadcast technology with DISH Network in the United States kicking off this month. The win for Alcatel has been called significant both for the company and for the emerging standard, DVB-SH. To date, it has struggled to get past Qualcomm’s dominant technology, MediaFLO, in use by Verizon and AT&T, which today announced it would launch servcies in 58 markets on Sunday. The DISH trials are also generating speculation about how the satellite provider’s plans might mesh with its recent purchase of 700 MHz spectrum. To shed light on the technology issues surrounding the satellite network, Associate News Editor Sarah Reedy spoke with Olivier Coste, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s mobile broadcast activities.

On how DVB-SH can work with DVB-H: First of all, it is backwards-compatible. All the chipsets or devices, which receive DVB-SH immediately, also receive DVB-H. DVB-SH is just an improvement to DVB-H. The chipsets and the terminal receive DVB-H as soon as they receive DVB-SH. That is the first important element to enable the complementary [nature] of the network. The second element is the full compatibility of DVB-SH and DVB-H on the application level, so all those applications developed on DVB-H today, such as the electronic program guide or conditional access or interactivity, voting – all those applications allotted for DVB-H, are also applicable and usable for DVB-SH. DVB-SH is just an improvement of the transport layer that Alcatel-Lucent is making fully transparent, which means that the ecosystem of applications there around DVB-H is fully valid for services deployed for DVB-SH. They are compatible; the terminals have no difficulty in receiving both. The ecosystem is the same, and it is one chip set.

On DVB-SH’s ability to go granular: DVB-SH is also an improvement to DVB-H regarding spectrum capacity. DVB-H uses primarily 700 MHz as a spectrum. DVB-SH can receive on 700 MHz, but also in higher spectrums such as L band or S band, which are up to 3 Ghz. In many countries in the world, you can either have difficulties in finding 700 MHz available or you can have an interest in combining 700 MHz and additional spectrum, such as S band, to provide more coverage or more capacity. That is a very significant improvement to DVB-H that DVB-SH provides. You have three main elements at the core of DVB-SH. You can bring twice as many channels for more coverage on the same spectrum. The second element is you can also use additional spectrum such as L band or S band beyond the 700 MHz, which is another target today by MediaFLO and DVB-H. The third element is the capacity to use satellite in combination with terrestrial deployment to add a satellite component to a terrestrial deployment in order to bring instant coverage in wide regions…What we want to leverage with DVB-SH is this capacity to combine several pieces of spectrums to provide a better service, better coverage and better capacity.

On DVB-SH’s snowballing success: We are active around the world to promote mobile TV as an attractive new service to customers, and we are developing technologies to enable the service. To have consumers happy about such a new service, you need to provide them with an excellent quality of service. Today, DVB-SH enables probably the most cost-effective infrastructure to provide mobile TV on all kinds of devices on which consumers want to watch TV. This could be handsets, portable multimedia players and cars. On all these terminals and devices, DVB-SH is the most powerful open standard, which enables the delivery of TV services.

On the customer perspective: All this is driven by the customer appetite. The customer appetite for mobile TV is to receive good, quality TV on the screen – the smaller handset on the phone or bigger GPS handsets in the car, a significant number of channels – people will pay for a TV service if you have a significant number of channels, and a third element of very good coverage. People are happy to pay for any TV or mobile service as long as it works wherever they go – at home, in the office, in the tube, in the train, when driving, when on holidays – wherever they go, they want to be able to receive the service for which they paid. That is why coverage is so important. DVB-SH is also designed to enable the combination of several pieces of spectrum when necessary to provide a sufficient number of channels, the capacity to combine satellite and terrestrial, and the capacity to provide that rural coverage. When you are driving a car on the motorway, you receive the signal directly from the satellite, and in urban environments, through terrestrial deployment with very good indoor coverage quality, which is enabled by the performance of DVB-SH.

On mobile TV’s global potential: Mobile TV is developing in various conditions in various parts of the world. You have two interesting examples, which are Japan and Korea, where the service is free to air, mostly for regulatory reasons, and the take-up is very significant. You have 18 million devices distributed in Japan and about 10 million devices in Korea – all that within in two to three years. The market take-up is very significant, but it is free to air. In Italy, the service has been launched three years ago as pay TV, about 10 Euros (about $15) per month. You have less than a million customers, which is also very significant, within two years. You see countries and places with very specific regulatory business conditions where mobile TV is being deployed very successfully. [In the US,] we have had no figure regarding the initial take up of MediaFLO through Verizon. We are very optimistic about the potential of services provided on cars through the hybrid satellite terrestrial solutions such as what ICO currently is trialing.

In Korea, out of the 10 million devices that are mobile-TV-enabled, half of them are devices designed for cars such as GPS or in-car reception. Half of that is handsets, and half of it is devices used in cars. The average viewing time in cars is two hours a day. Almost 5 million devices watched two hours a day in cars – this is very significant. This is where DVB-SH can play a role, and the combination of hybrid terrestrial satellite solutions is very significant. It can enable handsets and devices, which are in the car or already installed in the car. We believe this kind of combination is attractive for the consumer.