Norway shuns DVB-H for DMB, European mobile TV drama deepens
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 21st 2008 at 6:57PM
Granted, Norway isn't actually a member of the European Union, which makes it slightly less dramatic that they've rejected the Nokia-tested, EU-approved DVB-H standard in favor of DMB -- but it's still Europe, and this just adds to the ugly, fragmented picture that mobile TV is becoming around there. Germany has all but abandoned DVB-H to go with its free, designed-for-TV counterpart, DVB-T, and the UK has recently hooked up Qualcomm with spectrum for a MediaFLO network, so ubiquitous DVB-H is anything but a guarantee across the continent at this point. The current Norwegian plan calls for nine DMB channels to launch by winter, which may be viewed as a superior technology there because it's better able to cover rural areas in a cost-effective way than DVB-H is. Bottom line: if you'd dreamed of some day carrying a single device from country to country to catch all the spellbinding local TV programming, you might be out of luck for a while.
Filed under: Multimedia
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Who Knows @ Aug 21st 2008 7:08PM
So the European Mobile-Tv market is like the America 3G market now?
chlettn @ Aug 22nd 2008 4:23PM
Kinda, yes LOL
Anyway, it seems that nobody really cares about mobile TV anyway...
Jamar @ Aug 22nd 2008 1:13PM
(doublepost?)
Jamar @ Aug 22nd 2008 1:14PM
Hope Norwegians really like iRiver, Samsung, etc...
Fernando @ Aug 22nd 2008 5:44PM
Eh, there goes my dream of having a truly standard digital tv standard (see what I did there?)
I can hope that 10 years from now everybody will focus on a free, available everywhere standard, kinda like everyone's going to gsm, finally.
Tor Slettnes @ Aug 25th 2008 5:19PM
Don't know what you mean by "everyone's going to gsm, finally".
GSM is a 2G technology, and is finally (though still slowly) being supplanted/phased out in favor of UMTS (3G). (The underlying air interfaces are TDMA and W-CDMA, respectively).
I think what you are referring to is the fact that LTE is rapidly gaining ground as the de facto "universal" 4G technology, with even the likes of Verizon Wireless (a CDMA2000 partner) opting for it, rather than continuing on the CDMA2000 roadmap. (Most likely since they were bought out by Vodafone). Still, actual deployment is years away. Obsolescence of their existing CDMA/EVDO networks is even further into the future. It does not look like they will use the SIM standard, for instance, so you probably will not be able to buy a handset and expect it to work on either AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon or Sprint anytime soon.
By then, health concerns over wireless technology (incl. microwave ovens) will have come to bear, incl. links to alzheimers, autism, etc, - and we'll all be using pay phones again. :*)