Roaming Moaning Reding spouting more nonsense
Top EU apparatchik and general mobile industry pain-in-the-neck, Vyvyan Reding, has yet again proven that facts should not get in the way of attention grabbing headlines.
In an interview yesterday, she proclaimed that DVB-H should be universally adopted within EuroTelcoLand and the mobile industry should get its finger out and implement it fast. It is mind blowing that she points towards China as a utopian land in the MobileTV world when they don’t even have a service launched and one of the EU member states, Italy, has probably the most flourishing and advanced mobileTV industry in the world based upon DVB-H technology.
Despite the success of Italy, it is Commission policy that ALL spectrum should be allocated on a basis of technology and service neutrality – in other words the businesses themselves should decide which technology and services to deploy. If the British Bolshevik Corporation wins an auction for some spectrum why shouldn’t they be able to deploy a High Definition Free to Air channel if they so decide?
As Dean Bubley points out her maths also leaves a little to be desired: she forecasts MobileTV revenues in 2009 of €11.4bn on 50m users worldwide, that is €19 per user per month. Nearly every mobile operator would immediately deploy mobileTV if they were guaranteed that sort of monthly revenues.
My personal theory on this is that Nokia and Ericsson have been busy brainwashing (oops sorry lobbying) her and they feel that some European wide diktat is necessary in favour of DVB-H technology to keep the European airwaves free from Korean (DAB) and USA (MediaFlo) technology. My experience is that companies only resort to diktats when they are losing the technological arguments.
I’m also surprised Roaming Reding didn’t stipulate the requirement that each mobile operator should broadcast every single European TV channel from all 27 member states. This would mean that every single person in Europe when travelling can have the comfort of their home telly available on the mobile phone – of course this service should be free to everyone.
In an interview yesterday, she proclaimed that DVB-H should be universally adopted within EuroTelcoLand and the mobile industry should get its finger out and implement it fast. It is mind blowing that she points towards China as a utopian land in the MobileTV world when they don’t even have a service launched and one of the EU member states, Italy, has probably the most flourishing and advanced mobileTV industry in the world based upon DVB-H technology.
Despite the success of Italy, it is Commission policy that ALL spectrum should be allocated on a basis of technology and service neutrality – in other words the businesses themselves should decide which technology and services to deploy. If the British Bolshevik Corporation wins an auction for some spectrum why shouldn’t they be able to deploy a High Definition Free to Air channel if they so decide?
As Dean Bubley points out her maths also leaves a little to be desired: she forecasts MobileTV revenues in 2009 of €11.4bn on 50m users worldwide, that is €19 per user per month. Nearly every mobile operator would immediately deploy mobileTV if they were guaranteed that sort of monthly revenues.
My personal theory on this is that Nokia and Ericsson have been busy brainwashing (oops sorry lobbying) her and they feel that some European wide diktat is necessary in favour of DVB-H technology to keep the European airwaves free from Korean (DAB) and USA (MediaFlo) technology. My experience is that companies only resort to diktats when they are losing the technological arguments.
I’m also surprised Roaming Reding didn’t stipulate the requirement that each mobile operator should broadcast every single European TV channel from all 27 member states. This would mean that every single person in Europe when travelling can have the comfort of their home telly available on the mobile phone – of course this service should be free to everyone.
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