Orange, T-Mobile pilot presages full TDTV launch
Orange pilots TD-CDMA MBMS technology
A year and a bit after it finished a trial with Vodafone, Telefónica, and 3UK, Orange is having a further look at TDTV, the UMTS TD-CDMA-3GPP Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) technology.
The operator will this time partner with T-Mobile for the trial, which will take place in London, not Bristol, and will again use technology from the company formerly known as IP Wireless, now acquired and fully owned by NextWave Wireless.
John Hambidge, chief marketing officer for NextWave Wireless network products, said that the renewed trial takes the level of service and devices up a level.
"We're calling this a pilot, not a trial," he said, "because we really see this as on the path to real launch, so it's more than just a trial."
Hambidge said that the acquisition by NextWave, which also owns the former PacketVideo, gives the company a much greater scope of operation, rather than being merely an air interface provider.
Hambidge said that TDTV is likely to be attractive to operators for a number of reasons.
First, with a broadcaster having won DVB-H spectrum in Germany, and mobilkom having lost the DVB-H spectrum race in Austria, and spectrum allocations a long way off in other countries, it is still unclear what the value to operators will be of DVB-H, he said.
Second, operators already own TD-CDMA spectrum. In the UK, with forecasts of UHF spectrum sales reaching €300 million, that's a significant business advantage.
Third, TDTV, with its 10MHz of spectrum that UMTS operators already have under licence, supports 28 channels, he said.
"With DVB-H, how will they [the operators] differentiate, and can they drive revenues from a 8MHz band that supports only 16 channels, many of which are likely to be free to air," he said.
There would also be, with TDTV, no "third mouth to feed", Hambidge said. "Operators can get content direct form the provider, with no third party broadcaster."
Hambidge also claimed a range of technical benefits of TDTV, including sub-one second channel change times, and ease of integration with unicast services.
"There's no doubt if mobile broadcast TV is going to succeed it needs operators. They're the ones with the billions of customer relationships. But where's the business case for operators of wholesaling a broadcaster's product? If they're not part of the revenue case, why would it be a priority?" Hambidge said.
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