News
BREW 08: Qualcomm seeks European mobile TV partners
Stuart O'Brien in San Diego May 28 2008, 9:17pm
Comments (1)
MediaFLO provider hoping to shake up 'disappointing' European mobile TV market.
Qualcomm is confident it will find European operator and content provider partners for its MediaFLO broadcast TV technology.
The company recently secured spectrum in the UK capable of supporting such services, but clearly has wider ambitions on the continent.
Speaking to to journalists this morning, Andrew Gilbert, EVP and president of Qualcomm Internet Services, said:
"I'm disappointed [with how the mobile TV landscape has developed in Europe]. The user-experience offered by services based on DVB-H just isn't very good and poisons the market for everyone else."
Gilbert cited channel switching lag in Italian DVB-H mobile TV services as one example.
He added: "As an optimised mobile solution, MediaFLO meets all the preconditions for a successful quality of service - all I need to launch MediaFLO in Europe is the spectrum, operator partners and content partners. I hope I'll find all three in Europe soon."
However, to date MediaFLO has only launched commercially in the US, through Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
Conversely, DVB-H services (supported by Nokia among others) are available commercially in Italy (one million subscribers), Finland and ten other countries around the world.
Comments
“Mobile Television”
Posted by: Tony Orwin - May 29, 9:17am
Andrew seems to have missed the point here. Mobile TV in Europe - and elsewhere in the world has a superb technical platform in T-DMB - a Eureka 147 based protocol that delivers a bouquet of stable programmes with good in building penitration, extended battery loife and with a raft of additional advanced data services that are deivered via existin DAB / DAB+ based broadcast infrastructure. The unfortunate (for qulacom) truth is that Europe is not looking to promote D-VBH in opposition to Mediaflow - it already has a superior, working platform in T-DMB.