Tell us the story of how Alcatel got into Mobile TV… and why the Hybrid Solution?

Herbert Mittermayr: Alcatel had, for a long period of time, been evaluating the different possibilities of TV on mobile phones. We are, as you know, quite a significant player in the fixed DV and IPTV domain and are practically the leader in the field of IPTV.
As a simple straightforward consequence we engaged in Mobile TV as well. As TV is a mass market concept, it was important to establish a mass market service on the mobile domain.
This is quite easy to say but quite difficult to realise, because when we talk about a mass market it should be available everywhere and should be available for millions of customers in parallel. It should have with plenty of channels … not just two or three or ten, but perhaps 30 or 40 or more.
The same terminal should also be able to be used across Europe. It was all about the availability of spectrum, because this was the denominating factor for the system.

We simply went about finding a frequency that would be available all across Europe … now … in a short time frame… and that would be useable from a regulation perspective.
When you do this, you come to one frequency, which is S-Band. It’s not UHF, it’s not L-band … there are plenty of other minor bands which could be used in some occasions but not in a harmonious deployment across Europe.
It’s an absolute precondition that if your Mobile phone works in roaming conditions, your Mobile TV does as well. Likewise, coverage indoors and in rural conditions, just like for mobile phones, must also work for Mobile TV.
That led to the discussion about a system… what kind of system could benefit from these frequencies. Our frequency has one precondition. That is that we needed to use a satellite, otherwise we could not get the frequency. As it turns out from a business perspective it is simply cheaper to distribute a large number of TV channels over a whole country with a satellite than with any other technology.

We’ve heard about DVB-H in UHF… How is this different and what improvements have been made?

We believe that DVB-H as such is a good standard for various reasons. It’s European driven, there is a lot of push behind it, and also from the performance perspective for the end user it is quite a good technology. What we’ve done, together with our partners, is to put our brains together and enrich the DVB-H standard with some additional technical features. We’ve also improved reception quality, and transferred the frequency where DVB-H is used to the S-Band. In the June board meeting of the DVB forum in Geneva, it was agreed that there would be an extended standard of DVB-H which is called DVB-SSP (Satellite Service for Portables).
There are many supporters for this project and we are currently working on standards that will be finalised by the end of this year. This will give us the security that for terminal manufacturers there is a stable situation for the technology on the market.

What kinds of feedback have you been getting to date?

There are two kinds of discussions. One is centred on the technology. This satellite/terrestrial technology is not an easy technology. But the operators we’ve spoken to feel this is an absolutely credible solution and we have recently announced, together with Orange that they are joining in the testing with us and the CNES in France.
The other kind of feedback is about the business case, which is based on deployment costs. This is driven by the terrestrial repeater network which you need in any case. The network deployment costs are driven firstly by the number of repeaters you need… several thousand to cover a single country.
This is where S-band is interesting. It’s S-UMTS, which is practically the same frequency as UMTS band. So when you deploy terrestrial repeaters for DVB-H, you can easily reuse the sites and antennas and feeders and power supplies of the existing 3G cellular sites. This gives us a big advantage in cost terms. This is the strongest argument we have today.

What is the time frame for rollout?

In the ecosystem with our partners we have defined a very clear schedule. We will have the standard by the end of 2006. We will have the chipsets from DiBcom and Philips by Q2 2007. This is early enough to have the terminal manufacture in quantity by Q4 2007.
In parallel we have the repeater development – and we will have the quantities of repeaters in the requested time frame… by Q4 2007… and last but not least there is the satellite construction which is ongoing, which is in time to have the satellite in orbital position – up and running by 2009.
It is important to underline the fact that we have already signed an agreement with Eutelsat, and filed for an orbital position.
This was a precondition for being granted the frequency licences across Europe. Put all that together and you compare it with a deployment in UHF or other frequencies and you will find that we are even earlier on the market with a country-wide deployment than you can ever have with UHF, for the simple reason that UHF will not be available country-wide before 2010 or 2012 – as it depends on the switch-off of analogue TV.

Another advantage in S-Band lies in the small antenna and terminal size. Do you think this will help sell the terminals?

One of the difficulties in UHF is that you need a relatively big terminal and a very long antenna. With S-band, this is suitable to a handset in the same size as a mobile phone, and the antenna is only 6 cm long, so it can be built into the handset.
This means you can easily build in a second antenna, giving antenna diversity which for reception quality is a very important point.

Are you very excited about this project?

I have never had, in my entire career, so many positive responses on a brand new idea in such a short time. It’s incredibly positive, because there are strong arguments for our customers simply from a business perspective. It really enables them to be at the core of the value chain and save a lot of money.