UK and Korea to swap mobile telly tips

The UK and Korea have entered a six-month trial to see if two variants of DAB, the broadcast standard which can be used for mobile TV, have legs – shortly before BT starts its own full commercial rollout of one of them.

The trial will cover the London area and will see a variety of providers including the BBC, the Cartoon Network and ITV broadcasting content to TV-enabled handsets.

Joe Public won't be able to join in with the experiment - which involves organisations including the UK and Korean governments, BT, LG and Samsung - as the trial is currently in the technical phase and closed to consumers.

According to Matthew Honey, UK chairman of the trial, among the issues the project will investigate are how the receivers perform, content protection, coverage and chipsets.

The first, three-month phase will explore the audiovisual side of DMB and DAB-IP, to be followed by a second phase, looking into interactive services, including 'red button' functionality and pay-per-view services such as sports or adult programming.

Both variants of the technology, however, will soon be in the hands of the public. Korea has had DMB broadcasts since 2005, with two million TV-phones to be sold by the end of this year, while BT is planning to launch a DAB-IP service later this year with Virgin Mobile.

According to the project leaders, lessons from these trials will be used in other countries where the technology may be rolled out: China, France, Germany and Mexico are on the list of would-be DAB watchers.

It is thought that there are now more countries testing mobile TV based on DAB variants than on the DVB-H standard, which is heavily backed by Nokia.

With a standards war raging in the UK over mobile TV, proponents of DAB are being careful not to position it as a cure-all for the mini-TV question.

Quentin Howard, CEO of the WorldDAB Forum, said: "The message I take to the EU, to the broadcasters, to the manufacturers is that multi-standard is not a barrier. Most manufacturers are thinking about multi-standard chipsets."

While many of the major manufacturers have broadcast their interest in mobile TV - O2, Orange and BT among them - substantial barriers remain before mobile TV is the norm, not least regulation and rights questions.

John Whittingdale MP, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, said the industry should not be overly threatened by them, however.

He said: "These are all relatively minor matters. I hope these minor difficulties can be resolved soon."

One barrier, however, may take more effort to overcome – consumer apathy. Several analyst reports have found mobile users to be uninterested in taking up telly on the go.

Plus: Read our leader on why mobile TV is important for the enterprise.