With Mobile TV the hottest topic at IBC and in the mobile industry at large, Mobile Europe editor Keith Dyer speaks to Herbert Mittermayr, Vice President, Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Broadcast. Mittermayr presents his vision for unlimited mobile TV, harmonized frequency authorization, and how Alcatel-Lucent's proposition with Unlimited Mobile TV can help end users enlarge their experience, and mobile operators provide the best quality mobile TV solution.
MOBILE EUROPE: Alcatel-Lucent has had a dedicated mobile broadcast business for a couple of years now. Can you explain how your view of the mobile TV market has evolved in that time?
Herbert Mittermayr: It is clear that Alcatel-Lucent has thought two to three times about how to get hold of the complex issues of mobile television. The main issues are around frequency, availability of spectrum, the regulatory situation and cost of deployment, of course. Finally also the quality of service of mobile TV for the end user is key.
We reached some major conclusions.
First was the need for a solution which can also use other spectrum than UHF. To start with there are limitations on harmonized spectrum availability across the world. We found that a great possibility is the frequency in the so called S-Band.
Secondly, we found that users indeed perceive mobile TV as TV on the mobile so it has to be a great experience on a mobile handset, both on connected and non-connected devices. Therefore you need to go further to user expectations, and anticipate the clear need for excellent quality wherever you are, including perfect indoor coverage but also wide regional coverage.
Thirdly, for true mobile TV, providing five or 10 channels is not enough. You need an attractive bouquet with a great number of broadcast channels as well as additional channels including video on demand. If operators want to differentiate in their bouquets you end up with a minimum of 20 to 30 channels. 3 Italy has done a good exercise, and also many other trials show some key findings. The number of channels is key, perfect indoor and wide area coverage is mandatory for user satisfaction and good quality even for longer formats is expected. And that's why we chose DVB-SH as our method of choice to meet all these demands.
And finally there are the network deployment costs. The business case for mobile TV is attractive, but the network costs can kill it. It is mandatory.
ME: DVB-SH adds the utilization of the satellite band to the DVB-H standard. What are the advantages, to the user and the industry, of doing so?
HM: DVB-SH for the first time combines terrestrial and satellite technologies, connecting these two worlds. Now for the first time it is technically possible to combine them, and there will be the opportunity for businesses to develop a combined operation. This is remarkable and additionally meets an important end user need. The end user doesn't care where signal comes from, just that it must work and work everywhere in a perfect way. So when you go out of the home and sit in the car and then leave the city, you can still watch mobile TV because as well as terrestrial repeaters you are also getting it from the operators' satellite. Then it becomes really unlimited mobile TV in the sense that you are unlimited in terms of reception, and also in the number of channels. We can have up to 90 broadcast channels plus additional channels and VoD with 3G streaming- all with no visible difference to the end user. This is what we are showing at IBC – different technology on exactly the same terminal, DVB-H and DVB-SH as well as 3G streaming.
ME: With all the standards competition in this area, does the industry really need another variant on an existing standard? Don't you stand the risk of being accused of confusing things further by trying to push a proprietary, Alcatel-Lucent solution into the market?
HM: No, not at all, because we have had the opportunity to put DVB-SH as a new standard in the DVB-H family, a standard supported by many companies. Therefore DVB-SH is a fully open – non-proprietary standard, as all other DVB standards.
I am very impressed that DVB-SH is gaining such speed within the DVB Forum and the DVB-H community. From the beginning we said it was an opportunity. So we did work on the new standard together with many other industrial players. Qualcomm also proposed a new technology, but not in an open way. Naturally with DVB any standard is open to anybody, even our competitors, but our advantage will lie in better time-to-market advantage
ME: So you think there is an ecosystem building up around DVB-SH, which has developed from being just an Alcatel-Lucent approach?
HM: There has to be. Operators are demanding a tangible end-to-end solution, and that is what we are showing at IBC. We are also integrating many 3rd party products in an end-to-end solution.
So we are showing there partners and presenting a true end-to-end solution from the head-end to the terminal. Much of that can come from Alcatel-Lucent, of course, except the terminal itself. DVB-SH will be a hot topic of conversation at the DVB Stand at IBC, as it is within the DVB Forum's latest newsletter, DVB Scene, which really impressed me with the range of companies supporting DVB-SH within their products. Of course any DVB-SH device will be compatible with DVB-H, as DVB-SH is an evolution of the DVB-H standard.
There are a number of device manufacturers in the ecosystem, such as Samsung, Sagem, Archos, with more to come.
ME: Any sign of Nokia entering the DVB-SH world?
HM: Today practically all major terminal vendors are evaluating DVB-SH. We are in contact with them steadily. Terminal vendors recognize that it is quite easy to integrate DVB-SH in a 3G terminal for example. The antenna systems within terminals are working on 2,1GHz already, so adding a tuner for 2,2GHz is easy. Furthermore it is part of our ecosystem to provide chipset, design expertise and measurement systems. Leading chipset manufacturers like DiBcom and NXP (ex Philips) are providing DVB-SH chipsets.
ME: Does Alcatel-Lucent only provide support for DVB-SH?
HM: No, we are technology agnostic, and that's why we are delivering network equipment, head-end solution as well as all professional services also for DVB-H. There are some advantages in favor of DVB-SH but in some countries partners might get UHF frequencies, so then we can also deliver DVB-H in UHF. We are also showing DVB-H repeaters within IBC. We even integrate DVB-H, DVB-SH and 3G streaming into our Unlimited Mobile TV solution.
ME: Has the level of interest extended beyond the supply chain into the satellite and mobile operators themselves?
HM: It has. We have just recently announced that we have agreed with ICO to an alpha trial in the USA of a hybrid satellite, terrestrial solution with Alcatel-Lucent doing the system design and engineering and Hughes Network Systems delivering the interactive data services. This is remarkable because here we have three industry leaders in a contracted relationship, Alcatel-Lucent, ICO, and Hughes. The major European satellite operators Eutelsat and SES Astra are also interested in these DVB-SH solutions – it's enabling for their business to have the commercial opportunity for these 30MHz of frequency.
Also, at the mobile operator level, SFR is trialing this technology in the French Pyrénées. It's a complete trial set up and installed on DVB-SH technology. It's interesting because DVB-SH enables them to re-use their existing sites and antennas. This works for DVB-SH because S-Band, at 2.2GHz, is the adjacent frequency to 3G. So consequently it is very cheap to upgrade any 3G site to DVB-SH, by re-using the antenna, the site, the cabling etc. This means their total cost of ownership is reduced and this a major advantage of DVB-SH for any mobile network operator.
Additionally, our value proposition includes the build-out, maintenance and operation of a network. The vision of Alcatel-Lucent is to be the outsourcing partner for any network infrastructure. We provide our professional services to operators to maintain and upgrade their networks. One of the recent wins was E-Plus. Under the terms of the network outsourc ing agreement, E-Plus Mobilfunk transferred the operational business divisions responsible for the operation, maintenance and deployment of its cellular network to Alcatel-Lucent, enabling E-Plus to concentrate on its core business, reduce operational expenses and increase network quality.
ME: Apart from the impact on the business case of the operators, what are the technical differentiators of DVB-SH, as you see them, particularly with reference to spectrum usage?
HM: The difference between DVB-H and SH is that DVB-SH can be used in wider frequency bands. That means in all frequencies below 3GHz – such as UHF, L Band, 3G extension bands, and at satellite band like 2.2 GHz and 2.6GHz also. So there are far more bands where DVB-SH can be used. In Europe the S-band is in the 2.2 GHz range. The fact is that it is not used and the European Commission has already decided that this band shall be used for services like mobile TV and with systems like DVB-SH.
On February 14 2007 Commissioner Viviane Reding expressed her desire to harmonise and put together rules for the use of S-Band, saying that a hybrid system should be used, and it should be used for voice, video and multimedia and broadcast services.
On July 18 this year Reding expressed her wishes on terrestrial mobile television. At that point she expressed that DVB-H is a proven technology. She also expressed her desire for harmonised frequency allocation for DVB-H. She repeated that S-band and DVB-SH is an alternative for deploying Mobile TV in a harmonized way in Europe.
Recently, on 22 August, the Commission communicated about the European-wide authorisation process for Mobile Satellite Systems (MSS), and is looking for a centralized European-wide authorization for the S-band spectrum…
This is positive because applicants will see a legal basis to get the frequency. Furthermore the whole 30 MHz are at stake which is a major difference to UHF as in most countries one 8MHz MUX is available. Consequently there must be a beauty contest and there can be only one winner and the others will lose. S-Band has 30MHz and maybe more than one company can get spectrum which opens competition.
ME: As for the services themselves. How do you think users in the mass market will react to and use mobile broadcast TV?
HM: Our user finding is that first off mobile TV has to deliver to the user the same TV experience he gets from his TV at home. The consumer is expecting his old TV programmes on a different terminal. VoD and interactive services will complement but linear TV is mandatory for the start. The integration of TV with personalization, interactivity, one-to-one advertising etc. will also happen. We do offer it and also see high potential for it, as a mobile handset allows true personalized one-to-one experience. But first we need to offer good linear mobile TV service, and then we can enrich the experience and the value chain with other services. If you start to overwhelm subscribers with complex services the users will not understand, and therefore will not use it. TV has a great advantage – it is a well-known service for more than 50 years.
ME: And do you have any strong views as to how the mobile players should move ahead with regards to their own business models?
HM: I believe mobile TV will be more pay TV than free-to-air – this is heavily dependant on the subsidy model of how the terminals are priced in the market. Typically today mobile terminals are subsidized with up to €200, therefore of course operators will be looking for pay TV to regain that investment with some return. Also advertising becomes a good possibility to get extra revenue. This will be the model for mobile TV on mobile phones. For dedicated mobile video terminals it might be different.
With our recent contract with the US-based satellite operator ICO, DVB-SH is gaining momentum. They address the vehicular market where terminal subsidy is not so important.
See Alcatel-Lucent's solutions for mobile TV at IBC in Hall 12P on Stand 139. See demonstra-tions of the potential of DVB-SH at the DVH Forum stand at IBC in Hall 1 on Stand 481.
More information: www.alcatel-lucent.com/ mobiletv