European Union (EU) member states agreed on Thursday to promote mobile TV by deregulating licensing and making available spectrum for these services.
DVB-H has been chosen as the preferred mobile TV standard in the EU although the choice is not made mandatory. Today, DVB-H has been launched in 19 out of 27 EU member states.
The decision-making council of telecom ministers of the EU member states endorsed the European Commission's strategy on mobile TV on Thursday.
"European mobile TV is a step closer to success following today's endorsement by the council of the commission's strategy for creating economies of scale in this important sector," said Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for information society and media, in a statement.
"This shows that political resolve and market developments are in tune to ensure this potentially multi-billion euro market is on the right track by mid-2008."
Mobile TV could become a market of up to 20 billion euros by 2011, reaching some 500 million customers worldwide, said Reding.
"We want the European industry to take the lion's share in this interesting market and European citizens to benefit from this," she told reporters at the ministers' meeting.
The commission considers 2008 to be a crucial year for mobile TV take-up in the EU due to important sports events, such as the European Football Championship and the Summer Olympics in Beijing, which will provide a unique opportunity for raising consumers' awareness and for the adoption of new services.
Reding called on the minority of EU governments, who are still reluctant, to endorse DVB-H as European standard.
DVB-H is an open standard developed by the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) consortium. It is part of a family of interoperable standards, together with DVB-S for digital satellite TV, DVB-C for digital cable TV and DVB-T for digital terrestrial TV.
Today, South Korea and Japan together have 20 million mobile TV customers, more than 30 times the number of users in the EU. These competitors have undertaken massive efforts to promote their own single standards around the globe, threatening one of Europe's most promising industries, said the commission.
The commission, the executive body of the EU, now intends to work closely with the member states in the coming months on the authorization and licensing regimes, and to look together with the industry at issues such as service layer interoperability and right management applied to mobile TV.
Source: Xinhua
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