Mobile TV technology companies are joining forces in North America to promote the digital video broadcast-hand-held standard and prepare for a face-off with a common rival: Qualcomm. Crown Castle's new mobile TV unit, Modeo, Intel, Motorola, Nokia and Texas Instruments have formed the Mobile DTV Alliance to back the DVB-H standard.

The DVB-H standard has garnered the support of much of the GSM community and spawned a number of trials in Europe. In the U.S., however, only Crown Castle has embraced it. And the U.S. success of DVB-H faces a bigger threat from Qualcomm, which is not only promoting its own multicast streaming specification (called forward link only, or FLO) but also building its own commercial network, scheduled to launch in late 2006.

Qualcomm is the only company backing FLO and DVB-H has dozens of individual supporters, which necessitates a unified front, said Yoram Solomon, director of marketing for industry and standards in TI's mobile connectivity solutions group.

“DVB-H is a standard, but there are a lot of options within that standard,” Solomon said. “Unless everyone supports the same set of parameters, there won't be interoperability. We're here to facilitate that.”

The alliance will define an end-to-end spec for DVB-H that carriers, vendors and content providers would all reference when designing equipment, handsets and networks. They also could set certification guidelines in a manner similar to groups like the WiMAX Forum.

Although DVB-H is a global technology, the alliance's initial focus will be North America, mainly because of the unique way the U.S. is approaching multicast mobile TV. European carriers are launching their own TV networks using their own spectrum, but U.S. carriers are expected to rely on third-party providers such as Qualcomm and Crown Castle. With multiple carriers using the same network, coordination between all of the involved companies is critical, Solomon said.