Mobile TV in France

Four trials have been conducted in France to validate Mobile TV. The feedback of these pilots is given in the excellent JDNet article (fr).

Based on my last trip to Korea in January 2005, I am convinced that this is a new killer application. Mobile TV will be very successful if the price is affordable.
I will talk about the Korean experience in a future post...

Some lessons from the French trials:

• The main usage is at home after 7pm!  The mobile is an alternative TV screen at home. This is a big surprise. It was expected that the main usage would be in public transportation, that's not the case!
• Key programs are obviously sports, news, music, adult content.
• Usage is 20 minutes per day.
• Users are ready to pay between 7 and 10 euro/ month for the service.

In Europe there are some other trials ongoing and the service will be soon launched in Italy, hopefully before the World Cup.

                                    

In France there are still very important questions:

• Technology

It seems that the technology chosen in Europe will probably be DVB-H as it is pushed by big players (mainly Nokia).
DVB-H is an adaptation of DVB (in French TNT) for handsets.
Other technologies are DMB-S (satellite) and DMB-T (terrestrian). DMB is an adaptation of DAB. In France, Alcatel space is pushing for a combination of terrestrian and satellite technologies.
There is as well Flo, a proprietary standard done by Qualcomm which doesn't seem too much popular in Europe.

• Indoor coverage

The indoor coverage is a key requirement and still a challenge for all technologies.

• Lack of frequency

In France there is a lack of frequency so a big lobbying is ongoing to get free frequencies.

• Who owns the customer?

Is it the mobile operator (e.g. Orange or Bouygues) or the TV channel (e.g. Canal+ or TF1) or both?
The encryption of pay TV like Canal+ will be done through the SIM which means that an agreement between both partners is necessary...

 

In summary, this is a very hot issue in the whole mobile com industry. For sure when the service is launched, it will be really a big success!