Why radio should care about mobile TV
Posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 8:55pm. #
The recent Mobile TV show in Munich, Germany, was interesting for a radio person like me.
What an apt country to host a Mobile TV show. Drive 600km north, and you end up in Dusseldorf, where at the Radio Fair of 1954, a company called Intermetall unveiled the first portable transistor radio. Later that year, transistor radio sets were in the shops – at the equivalent of £250 in today’s prices. It wasn’t until the mid 1960s that the prices fell to below £50 each and they began to take off. (You might like to compare that to DAB Digital Radio today). So, mobile radio has had a good 53 years to mature somewhat; and now, mobile television is just around the corner. In some cases, like the iRiver I show above, it’s already here. But what technology should it use?
As I’ve said here before, consumers don’t care about technology. They don’t care about whether it’s FM, HD Radio, DAB, DRM, DVBH or TDMB. They just care that it works. But radio broadcasters should care about mobile TV technology – possibly more than TV broadcasters. And here’s why.
Take DVB-H. For a radio broadcaster, DVB-H is bad news: because it’s not backwards compatible with anything, so you’ll have more transmission costs to get onto this new platform. For a manufacturer or network provider, it’s not particularly good news either: a brand new network will have to be built, and in many cases (the UK included) the frequencies won’t become free for another few years. And for the consumer, it’s also bad news: my device will only pick up those broadcasters who’ve elected to spend money to broadcast on this new network. But Nokia are hugely behind it; and Nokia’s influence shouldn’t be underestimated. A full service is in Finland (soon, if not now), unsurprisingly – and in Albania, rather more surprisingly. For radio – it’s capable, at least; Finland’s Kiss (a station that appears to be run by Nokia, since it does everything Nokia tells them to do) is available, though I’m unclear of the transmission costs. The technology isn’t too far away from DVB-T (Freeview, if you’re in the UK), or DVB-S (Sky). For TV broadcasters, it’s close to a system they understand well – and probably, therefore, worth pursuing.
But that’s until you examine DMB. That’s a DMB receiver above. DMB is based on DAB technology – so, for a radio broadcaster, DMB is good news: because it’s backwards compatible with DAB Digital Radio. That iRiver device picked up Das Erste, but also picks up nearly twenty different digital radio stations. For a manufacturer or network provider, that’s also good news: because the radio companies have already paid to build a DAB network, and the frequencies are already internationally allocated. And for the consumer, that’s also good news: a consumer that thrives on content and choice (and all consumers do, no matter what Mark Ramsey says) will get the content they already know and love with DAB Digital Radio, as well as additional multimedia content with DMB television services. The South Koreans use it, in its terrestrial and satellite varieties, so the devices are there with minimal software changes; trials are also underway in Norway and France – although it’s not launched anywhere other than South Korea quite yet.
Or, take the mobile IP network. For a radio broadcaster, this is kind of okay; these systems normally (but not always) use your existing internet streams; but knowing how slow GPRS gets within central London, I’m not entirely sure whether a unicast internet network is the best plan for broadcasting a mass-market local breakfast show, for example. For the consumer, it’s bad news – because someone has to pay for the mobile bandwidth – and, given the low revenues earned by a typical radio broadcaster, it won’t be them. And it’ll only work on your mobile phone – nothing else. For a network provider, it means little extra investment; but it does mean considerable use of the mobile phone network. Indeed, one person from Orange said that it was difficult – because radio ends up having much longer usage times than TV on her network. However, full TV in this way is already in many European countries.
Wait a second. Did the woman from Orange say what we just thought she said? Yes. Radio ends up having much longer usage times than TV on mobile phones – this coincides with research from Virgin Mobile and BT last year. Hold that thought. Think of what it could do to your TSL/hours figures if radio is on every phone, iPod, or PDA.
A sensible fallback position is to convince the network operators (who currently appear to call the shots around mobile television) of the benefit and worth of radio. Ensure they put an FM radio in every single handset they ever make, for example. Ensure that they understand that adding radio into a handset costs little and is seen as a real benefit by consumers.
And then, tell them that DMB is the only way for them to deliver broadcast television. Because it can deliver radio as well.
The choice of mobile TV technology really does matter for radio broadcasters. If the world chooses DMB, any DAB radio broadcaster will be available on millions of new devices at no extra cost. If the world chooses DVB-H, we won’t be. It’s time to get involved.
(As a disclosure: I do work for a station that broadcasts various services on DAB. My employer is not a WorldDMB member, though – and while they are shareholders in some DAB multiplexes, my employer has a multi-platform policy. I never blog here on behalf of my employer.)
