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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London — Mar 07, `08 — The BBC has launched a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.