Alcatel-Lucent, 3 Italia (a mobile operator owned by Hutchison Whampoa) and Italian public broadcaster RAI are launching a trial of Mobile TV trial in Italy. The network will be based on the DVB-SH (Digital Video Broadcasting — Satellite services to Handhelds) standard.
The trial, based on Alcatel-Lucent’s Unlimited Mobile TV solution, uses for the first time in the world a multi-layer DVB-SH terrestrial network blending low-power transmitters from a mobile operator and medium-power transmitters from a broadcaster.
The trial will take place in Torino and it will be overseen by RAI Technological Strategies Dept., Raiway SpA and RAI Research and Technology Innovation Centre, providing their three-year-old experience in mobile-TV field tests.
Cellular sites provided by 3 Italia will allow the indoor coverage of Torino’s downtown, while broadcast towers provided by RAI and Raiway will allow outdoor and vehicular coverage of the entire town of Torino.
Alcatel-Lucent will provide the DVB-SH equipment, the network planning, the network integration and the technical support required for the good execution of the trial. Alcatel-Lucent’s DVB-SH low-power repeaters will be co-localized with the live UMTS sites of 3 Italia and connected to the UMTS antennas.
The first phase of this trial, taking place from December 2007 to March 2008, will consist in a technology trial to validate the capability of DVB-SH to make available a large number of high-quality mobile TV channels, in various usage conditions. Alcatel-Lucent said several innovative technical characteristics of the DVB-SH will be evaluated during this trial, which in this first phase of the trial will be only terrestrial.
In a second phase of this trial, the broadcast signal from a satellite will be emulated by a transmitter located in a high-altitude helicopter; in order to study a real business situation, a sample panel of customers will be provided with commercial DVB-SH handsets. In a longer term perspective, tests with satellites in operation will be carried out in cooperation with a major satellite operator.
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- In August 2007, the European Commission adopted a proposal to select systems for mobile satellite services at European level. If adopted by the European Parliament and the EU Council, this new selection mechanism will allow Mobile TV based on DVB-SH in the S-Band to develop across Europe beginning in 2009.
- In September 2007, Alcatel-Lucent and Samsung Electronics demonstrated live broadcast mobile TV in S-Band using a Samsung SGH-P930 handset. Users were able to interact with the content of all the 3G/unicast and broadcast mobile TV channels available on the handset.
The specifications of the DVB-SH standard were approved by the DVB Project on February 14, 2007. The commercial availability of Samsung’s DVB-SH models is expected in Q1 2008.