TechLuver.com

Brussels — November 29, ‘07 — Today the rapid deployment of mobile TV services across Europe has taken a significant step forward as EU Member States endorsed the European Commission three pillar strategy presented in July: putting in place a joint approach to the licensing of mobile TV in order to accelerate the roll out of services and to encourage innovative business models; making available spectrum for these services, possibly in the UHF frequency band; and promoting the use of DVB-H as the mobile TV standard for Europe.

Next steps will now include the preparation of guidelines for authorization procedures and the addition of DVB-H to the official list of standards whose use all 27 EU Member States have to support and encourage. This proactive European strategy for mobile TV aims at giving European consumers the benefits of television everywhere and anytime, as is increasingly the case in Asia and the US. It also gives content creators, broadcasters, service providers and hardware manufacturers the certainty they need to roll-out mobile TV services across Europe in 2008.

The Commission is strongly committed to the success of mobile TV which could be a market of up to €20 billion by 2011, reaching some 500 million customers worldwide. 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 Olympic Games, which will provide a unique opportunity for raising consumers’ awareness and for the adoption of new services.

Today, South Korea and Japan alone 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.

To date DVB-H has been commercially launched in Italy and Finland, with trials in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, France, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. More at European Commission.

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Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems Wins DVB-H Mobile TV Frequencies In Germany

Qualcomm Intros Snapdragon, First Chipset to Break the Gigahertz Barrier with Multi-mode Broadband and Multimedia Features

SAN DIEGO  —  November 14, 2007 — Qualcomm today announced that it is delivering the first groundbreaking chipset products from the Snapdragon platform to numerous device manufacturers. The QSD8250 and QSD8650 are now shipping to customers worldwide, offering an unprecedented combination of mobile data processing, multimedia performance, 3G wireless connectivity and the lowest levels of power consumption for all-day battery life.

The Company will be demonstrating the Snapdragon platform running both Windows Mobile and Linux to deliver productivity applications, entertainment applications and advanced user experiences at Qualcomm’s New York Analyst Meeting.

The QSD8250 supports HSPA data rates of up to 7.2 Mbps on the downlink and 5.76 on the uplink, with full backward compatibility. The dual-mode QSD8650 supports HSPA, as well as CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. B, with full backward compatibility. The two solutions feature a custom gigahertz microprocessor core paired with Qualcomm’s sixth-generation DSP core running at 600 MHz for unsurpassed mobile performance delivering an instant-on and always-connected user experience.

Snapdragon’s support for HD video decode, 12 megapixel camera, GPS, broadcast TV (using MediaFLO, DVBH-H and/or ISDB-T), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth deliver even greater opportunities for device manufacturers to design compelling mobile products that make the promise of constant, seamless connectivity in an extremely thin and small form-factor a reality. More at Qualcomm.

T-Systems, business customer brand of Deutsche Telekom, has won the DVB-H Mobile TV Frequencies to transmit ‘Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld’ (DVB-H) standard, the German Federal Networks Agency said.

Matthias Kurth of German Federal Networks Agency said “building of the DVB-H network would begin in early 2008 and that Germany’s state capitals should be connected by the end of 2008, Coverage should reach 90 percent of the German population by 2015.”

T-Systems have been participating in DVB-H Pilotprojekt Berlin-Brandenburg since June ‘05.