Mobile-TV battlemoves to L-Band

Paris -- The 1.5-GHz L-Band is fast becoming disputed territory as mobile TV's backers escalate hostilities in the battle for spectrum.

Some promoters of the Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld format have advocated "poaching" L-Band, originally assigned to the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) radio standard, for DVB-H service in Europe. Britain's powerful Office of Communications (Ofcom) regulatory agency is addressing L-Band allocation in meetings this month. Although some dismiss the U.K. discussions as a local matter, the fallout could land on spectrum users elsewhere as promoters of the Digital Media Broadcast (DMB) and DVB-H standards angle to grab spectrum for their incompatible mobile-TV services.

In an ideal world, the 470- to 582-MHz UHF Band IV is the best spectrum fit for DVB-H, whose developers had that band in mind when they drafted the spec. But with the T-DMB format having already established a sizable market in South Korea and a nascent one in China, DVB-H's backers are under the gun. That has some looking covetously toward L-Band.

Calling the 1.5-GHz band "underutilized spectrum" and the UHF situation "too woolly," David Crawford, a professor at the U.K.'s University of Essex and director of business development at French vendor TeamCast, argued that "L-Band is the most suitable place to start DVB-H." Crawford said he came to that conclusion while chairing the DVB Projects Study Mission on Spectrum Issues for DVB-H.

UHF spectrum below 750 MHz is ideal for the handheld DVB format but "is not available universally," Crawford said.

The digital-TV switchover will require not only the cessation of analog broadcasts but also the reshuffling of digital frequency to free up sufficient spectrum for future auctions. How that block of spectrum--often called the digital dividend--will be allocated, and to whom, is hardly clear. In any given region, HDTV, SDTV, mobile TV and other emerging services will all scrap for the same spectrum, Crawford noted.

For now, the DVB Project is officially steering clear of the L-Band lobbying activity. But "when forward-thinking regulators like Ofcom advocate 'technology neutrality,' we have to take care that inconsistent or ambiguous rule-makings over the use of spectrum do not create market uncertainties," Crawford said elliptically.

As DVB-H proponents sweat out such negotiations, promoters of the competing DMB format appear less fazed by spectrum issues.

South Korea began commercial Terrestrial DMB (T-DMB) services on Band III in December. Several industrial consortia in China are also embracing T-DMB, with Beijing and Guangzhou both deploying Band III and Shanghai opting for L-Band.

'Creeping standardization'
John Hall, CEO of infrastructure and receiver developer RadioScape Ltd. (London), said his company now has systems in place at nine installations, including those of Beijing Jolon Digital Media Broadcasting, Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group and Guangdong Yue Guang Digital Multimedia Broadcasting. Rather than pick a single standard at the outset, Hall said the Chinese are taking "more of a creeping-standardization approach."

"As a chip company, the only real mass market we see today in mobile TV is T-DMB," said Frontier Silicon Ltd. CEO Anthony Sethill. U.K.-based Frontier is currently the sole T-DMB chip supplier to Samsung Electronics, which expects to provide 3 million T-DMB-enabled handsets in South Korea and 500,000 in China this year.

Comparing T-DMB's rising numbers with the snail's pace of DVB-H service rollouts in Europe, Sethill summed up the DVB-H dilemma with a question: "Where's the spectrum?"

In the end, each European country will have to make its spectrum decisions based on how it interprets the original European agreement allocating both Band III and L-Band for DAB. Some assert that the use of L-band for T-DMB, a variant of DAB, is a done deal. Germany, for one, is moving rapidly toward getting T-DMB on L-Band, with a plan to launch a commercial mobile-TV service in conjunction with the 2006 World Cup.

But L-Band's proponents within the DVB-H group argue that since DMB is not a digital "audio" broadcast service, the band should be available to DVB-H as well as T-DMB.

In Germany, at least, DVB-H and T-DMB have achieved a level of peaceful coexistence. DVB-H proponents have found UHF spectrum available in five of Germany's independent states, and UHF bands are expected to be available in the rest of the country by 2009. "In Germany, we did look for spectrum, and we found spectrum," said Urlich Reimers, chairman of the DVB Technical Module. "When people tell you there is no spectrum, don't believe them."

But Simon Mason, head of new-product development at digital infrastructure and technology provider Arqiva, described a more dire situation in the U.K. Using L-Band for DVB-H means more difficulty and cost in building the necessary wide-area networks, Mason said. None of the mobile handsets available today were designed for L-Band.

But "if you don't take part in the L-Band auction," Mason said, "the risk is you miss the mobile-TV opportunity."