During the past few months, China has turned its attention to mobile TV. The State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT), the top regulator for the broadcasting industry, has made its foray into mobile TV with a plan to deliver TV content to handsets and a slew of so-called value-added services like video-on-demand (VOD) and time-shift reception (replay, ad-zipping and so on).
In late August, SARFT presented a blueprint of its version of mobile TV service: it outlines a high-powered S-band satellite to cover major hubs in the country and terrestrial repeaters to reach mobile devices. What SARFT has in mind, officials say, is a future service not only intended for handsets but for other devices like PDAs, MP3/MP4s and even digital cameras.
SARFT plans to complete testing of terrestrial relays this year, run pilots by mid-2007 and make a commercial debut in 2008 for the Beijing Olympic Games.
The announcement not only gives SARFT an upper hand in technology and revenue growth, but also grants a political victory over adversary MII since the proposal entails a completely different architecture that does not intrude traditional telecom service. (Current regulations bar telcos and broadcasters from entering each other’s territories.)
In fact, SARFT adeptly calls its service MDMB (Mobile Digital Multimedia Broadcast) to imply it is not just for handsets. For now at least, MII and wireless operators can do little but sit on the sideline because legacy mobile networks (3G included) have limited bandwidth to handle video traffic and building a video overlay can be costly, whereas satellite is the “pipeline in the sky” that covers vast geography and a large population instantly.
The potential of mobile TV is tremendous. Analysts predict mobile TV could become the most popular service in the 3G era and customers in Asia alone could reach nearly 700 million by 2011. In China, 15-20 percent of 3G customers (about 25 million) could sign up for mobile TV and revenue may rise to 6-10 billion yuan (US$750 million- $1.2 billion) by 2010.
The first task facing SARFT is to establish a standard. The agency has made it clear it wants a uniform homegrown standard, which rules out adoption of DVB-H, a de facto standard in Europe; T-DMB in South Korea; and Qualcomm's MediaFLO. Although the Chinese standard may incorporate certain aspects of T-DMB and others, SARFT insists China must own IPR for mobile TV technology and not pay hefty licensing fees. Apparently, T-DMB is close to what SARFT has in mind, such as the use of satellite (S-band) to reach remote areas. DMB-enabled handsets can receive video streams directly from satellite or repeaters on the ground, which is attractive to SARFT because it is already using satellite for national TV broadcast.
The Academy of Broadcasting Technology (ABT), the R&D arm of SARFT, has unveiled STiMi (satellite and terrestrial interactive multimedia), an outline for transmission system based on Eureka 147, a standard for DAB. According to ABT, STiMi employs multiple OFDM carriers, HS-LDPC coding algorithm to ensure fast signal anticipation and capture, and flexible logic channel allocation for QoS. STiMi supports bandwidth up to 7.5 MHz and data rates from 2.7 Mbps to 12 Mbps, sufficient for high-quality downstream video.
STiMi is also designed for two-way communications for VOD, prepaid request and authentication, as well as MPEG-2 transport streams and IP. In addition, several companies are developing different flavors of mobile TV standard, most noticeably T-MMB (by Nufrontsoft), DMB-TH (a digital TV spec modified for handheld by Tsinghua University) and CMB (a community-area spec by Huawei Technologies). It is too early to tell any of them will gain SARFT approval given the sensitive nature of the issue and government’s heavy-hand.
Separately, a working group for mobile multimedia technology has revealed CMMB (China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting) will become the national standard and details will be made public by the year-end. One of the key features of CMMB is support of DAB and DMB that will make smooth migration from audio service and video. Few details are available for CMMB, but it is expected to address video/audio coding and delivery, channel coding and terminal (RF, DSP, API, viewer and battery) that may take at least a year before commercial products.
Besides standards, SARFT must also coordinate with MII on spectrum assignment for S-band satellite and terrestrial transmission. (MII has not finalized spectrum for 3G, which could fall between 1900-2400 MHz; S-band could move to 2500-2690 MHz to avoid interference.)
Another turf battle is licensing because MII oversees telecom equipment and handset production and inspection. Despite uncertainty, mobile TV service is already heating up. By the time you read this, Beijing Radio will have become the first in China to broadcast multimedia service to mobile devices, including 12 radio stations and two TV channels. Shanghai and Guangdong have also received license for DAB service. Potential customers in the three regions are over 100 million.
But don’t count cellphone operators out just yet. China Mobile and China Unicom are snatching up mobile TV customers by working with companies like Shanghai Media Group that supply video content. On September 1, China Unicom launched video service for its CDMA 1x customers with live broadcast, VOD and clip download.
Mobile TV can be the best opportunity for China after cellphone and SMS, given its entertainment appeal and a large user base (430 million and counting). However, the road to success can be bumpy given the country’s regulatory barriers, pell-mell market conditions, and unruly competition. Will SARFT be able to collaborate with cellphone operators for mobile TV coverage and applications? Can mobile TV lead to a new ecosystem of content developers, service integrators, network operators, and handheld manufacturers? After all, no one knows if mobile TV is a profitable business by attracting a large number of users. Stay tuned.
Lin Sun is a telecom consultant specializing in China. Contact him at lsun@chinanex.com