Blogging Nick Piggott

There were quite a few interesting things to see at Broadcast Asia, not least the dazzling array of new mobile phone devices heading their way to Europe. You can go for bling, or sleek, or chic or geek. You can get originals from Samsung, LG, SonyEricsson or get knockoffs from ZTE. What’s true for all of them is that it’s highly unlikely that you’ll pay anything like the true cost of them up front. The handset subsidy model is well established across most of the EU states, where you get a £400 / €650 handset for free in return for signing an 18 month contract at typically £30 / €50 a month.

This is relevant when you think about how to transmit radio digitally.

MBMS is a broadcast mode for 3G networks. Using unpaired carriers, it’s possible to simply broadcast multi-cast IP packets to handsets by enabling selected existing 3G sites to transmit the carrier, and creating a Single Frequency Network. (This almost identical in concept to IP Multicasting over DAB Digital Radio). When you lose the multicast carrier, the handset simply swaps back to normal 3G unicast mode and vice versa. This seems like the perfect method for “broadcasting” (streaming) radio to mobile phones, and from the networks’ point of view, it almost certainly is.

Meanwhile, over in France, a decision is being made to transmit radio using a variation of the DMB Mobile TV specification called “DMB Audio“, rather than the existing DAB or DAB+ specifications. DMB Audio is the DMB TV specification “adapted” to remove the requirement to transmit a video component, working on the assumption that (TV – Audio) = Radio. Despite the fact that no other country is showing any interest in this Frankenstein technology (c.f. SECAM), and that it delivers a lousy radio experience, there is one compelling reason to reject it (and MBMS and DVB-H) for radio transmission, and it’s one that everyone seems to have overlooked.

Try building a £30 / €50 kitchen radio for MBMS, DMB Audio or DVB-H.

Whilst these technologies can transmit audio, they’re primarily designed to transmit video and phone calls and a whole load of other things which dramatically raise the lowest point of entry to the technology. That means you simply can’t build a cheap and simple radio that will shift in its millions, and critically, can sell at a reasonable price without a subsidy or a contract. DMB-T is interesting because it was an extension of a simple technology to do a more complicated job. “DMB Audio” is the worst idea ever because it’s a complicated technology only using a portion of its capabilities.

It’s true that most modern digital broadcast systems can carry audio services. But that doesn’t mean they’re good technologies to transmit radio to the population as a whole, technologies that can span cheap radios in kitchens through to fully integrated multi-media receivers in mobile phones.

The European Commission is an influential body; the telecoms commissioner, Viviane Reding, especially so. It’s been her comments that have driven down roaming costs by threats of direct intervention into the market. So there’s no doubt that what she says, with the mandate of the European Commission, is hugely influential.

That makes her recent comments at CeBit remarkable.

Commissioner Reding thought it important that Europe standardise on a single technology for mobile television, and she was in no doubt that DVB-H was that standard. She said she could mandate a standard, but didn’t want to. Well, what on earth does that mean? That sounds like a remarkably heavy threat to me.

I don’t think WorldDMB’s response was quite the tone I would have expected; a bit too whiny, indignant and finger pointing.

The reason that Commissioner Reding’s comment/directive was so incredible is that she herself requested the formation of the European Mobile Broadcast Council (EMBC), who’s objective was to recommend whether mobile TV required standardisation, and if so, what that standard ought to be.

I’ve been part of the EMBC. I’ve flown to various meetings around Europe, sat in rooms full of people representing companies from all 27 EU states. My role was to represent radio – yes, hello, little old radio. The original “Mobile Broadcast” service. Not many of us radio people were there, and it’s a credit to GCap Media that we have the breadth of vision to engage with this kind of thing. Anyway, it was almost fun being the irritant in a room full of breathless, almost desperate, executives trying to claw their mobile TV services into something that had a prospect of profit. (And, incidentally, brazenly trying to steal spectrum from radio services).

I’ve been on mailing lists where documents have circulated and been commented on for 18 hours a day since last Autumn. I’ve seen emails which frankly are a total discredit to their authors and their companies. If I was a senior manager at those companies, I’d be concerned if any of them got a wider audience. Every single word has been analysed, discussed, debated, argued about, changed, reverted. I’ve seen documents that have pushed MS Word’s “track revisions” to the very limit.

And do you know what? The EMBC’s recommendation was very clear, and unanimously accepted. The EU Commission should not intefere with this market. It should not try and “steal” spectrum to make DVB-H happen, in the same way it wouldn’t do so to give DMB, DRM or anything else a legup. Mobile operators want the freedom to do it their way and let the market decide.

So why did so many of us, and our companies, invest so much time and money and effort into the EMBC to have it’s recommendations utterly ignored by Commissioner Reding? Is this the evidence of a bankrupt, pliable, European Commission that is merely a comfortable gravy train for those on it?

If Mme. Reding feels DVB-H is “the winner”, she’s badly informed. It’s entirely possible that her mis-information has come from a single source. But more pertinently than that, why should anyone participate in any further “consultation” requested by Mme. Reding if she so obviously ignores the contributions of many informed people, and goes with those whispered cosily in her ear?