Commission to guide national regulators on mobile TV

While many European countries are preparing to launch brand new mobile TV services ahead of the European Football Championships this June, the Commission has made clear to national regulators which measures should be applied for the new media to be successful.

Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands are expected to launch their national mobile TV services in the coming weeks, according to several analysts. These will join the services already in place in Finland, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, where mobile TV made its EU debut in 2006.

Mobile TV services already represent a mature market in Eastern Asian countries, in particular in South Korea and Japan, and the Commission wants the EU to follow suit. Indeed, the EU executive sees mobile TV not just as a “great business opportunity” but also a means of increasing the use of cross-border TV programmes, according to Bernd Langeheine, director of electronic communications policy at the Commission.

Brussels is thus doing everything in its power to pave the way for the take-off of the new service. After agreeing on a common EU technological standard for mobile TV and informally reserving parts of the coveted UHF band for mobile broadcasting (see background), the Commission will now soon come up with a set of guidelines to advise national regulators.

Brussels will suggest avoiding regional regulations like those in place in Germany, arguing that fragmenting the national market hampers the development of emerging TV mobile services. “We are definitely in favour of a one-stop shopping system,” said Langeheine during a conference on mobile business organised in Brussels by the Financial Times.

The official added that the Commission will propose that national regulators take into account all the different actors interested in the mobile TV business, including telecoms operators, TV broadcasters and pay TV service providers. The Brussels executive will also discourage the adoption of must-carry obligations, which force transmission networks to guarantee access to certain broadcasting channels, usually public.

Such must-carry obligations are in place in analogue TV systems but can be progressively phased out with the advent of digital television, which allows a higher level of competition. Mobile TV is considered a nascent market and the Commission is thus proposing the lightest possible regulation.

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