Orange and T-Mobile roll out TDtv in UK

Carriers Orange and T-Mobile are poised to announce the rollout of a broadcast mobile TV service in the UK this year that will use existing cellular spectrum, rather than having to wait until additional wireless spectrum is freed up with the completion of analogue switch-off in 2012, say industry sources.

The TDtv technology developed by embedded-software-systems provider NextWave Wireless will pool spare capacity in both operators' UMTS networks to deliver a multicast service to handsets equipped with special chipsets.

Neither the two carriers nor NextWave denied the rumoured rollout when approached - all three said they could not comment - but a source at one of the operators did verify the rumour, off the record, saying that an official announcement was imminent.

The deployment of TDtv technology by two tier-one European operators could be a severe blow for the future prospects of rival broadcast mobile TV technology DVB-H - which although has been around for much longer and has received the official endorsement of the EU, has so far only been deployed in a handful of countries with, overall, lacklustre results.

There is a growing chorus of critics within operator circles who doubt broadcast technologies such as DVB-H and MediaFLO will ever give a good return on investment.

Like DVB-H and MediaFLO, TDtv runs into the expense of deploying separate infrastructure beyond the existing cellular network, as well as specially adapted handsets. But by relying on mobile networks' often underutilized unpaired 3G spectrum, it can get a head-start in countries where there is no spare wireless spectrum for conventional broadcast technologies such as DVB-H and MediaFLO, which require different frequencies from those used by cellular technology, according to NextWave.

The vendor also points out that it saves operators from having to tie up with broadcasters to deliver broadcast services.

Last year NextWave conducted a technical trial of TDtv with four European operators - Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange and 3 UK - which it claims bore positive results. Between 11 and 14 channels were successfully broadcast simultaneously over just 5 MHz of TDD spectrum, says the vendor.

The trial also demonstrated how TDtv can mirror WCDMA coverage with less base stations than those needed by the cellular network, and successfully deliver TV broadcasts to phones in moving vehicles, adds NextWave.

The rumoured rollout has excited some in mobile-platform-provider circles, who see TDtv as an ideal hybrid between broadcast and cellular technologies over which to layer return-channel services such as mobile advertising. "It's ideal for serving ads," says one source.

T-Mobile is, together with O2, a mobile TV laggard in the UK. Whilst all other UK carriers, including Orange, have offered TV streamed over 3G for some time, T-Mobile only started trialling such a service in 2Q07.

TDtv is irrupting onto an increasingly crowded mobile TV technology market, where more and more ways of delivering TV to phones are competing for business from operators, handset makers and broadcasters. And some are broadcast technologies that require no network deployments.

This article appears in telecoms.com sister publication Mobile Media

To comment on any articles, please contact us at chatback@telecoms.com or have your say on our blog.

Bookmark this page

• Back to Top
• Print