The Chinese govt. announced technical standards for mobile content this week, according to news reports in the country. But details are unclear, making it hard to say who will benefit from them and how they'll affect the international mobile market. A wide array of companies have been watching China closely for this decision -- and the even-more anticipated awarding of 3G licenses, which there’s still no word on.
Exports to China
GENEVA -- National delegates will draft a resolution on a common alerting protocol (CAP) for public warning systems, and on the wider issue of information and communication technology standards for public warning, they agreed here last week. The resolution will go to ITU member countries to consider at a Nov. policy-making conference.
Viacom expanded its online presence in China in a deal to distribute ad-supported TV shows and pay-to-download music videos with Chinese search engine Baidu.com, it said.
The Taiwanese govt. plans to send traffic ticket and tax bill payment reminders to citizens’ e-mail and cellphone, the China Post reported. The service -- which starts in Dec. -- is the latest phase of a 10-year project to offer govt. services and information online.
The mobile music market will hit $9.3 billion in 2010 from “almost nothing” in 2001, In-Stat said. In a report, the firm said 2007-2008 will be “breakthrough years” for mobile music growth, as China, India and other drivers see music service subscribership jump. China will assume “prominence” in the market, In-Stat said, recording $2.8 billion revenue by 2010, trailing only Japan’s $3.4 billion revenue the same year.
FCC Chmn. Martin decided Fri. not to press for a vote on the AT&T-BellSouth merger so public comment could be solicited on proposed conditions emerging from negotiations among the commissioners. Martin said the vote could occur at the Nov. 3 open meeting if not sooner by circulation. The proposed conditions were offered late in the week by AT&T in response to FCC requests for language addressing the Democratic commissioners’ concerns.
The FCC was still trying late Thurs. to reach agreement on the AT&T-BellSouth merger, stirring unease about whether the agency would be ready to vote by the new deadline of today (Fri.). The FCC late Wed. put off action on the merger and a related net neutrality item until 11 a.m. today, once it was apparent commissioners weren’t ready to vote during the open meeting Thurs. as originally planned (CD Oct 12 p1).
Telemarketing firm PacificNet signed a deal with China Unicom to become a value-added SMS service provider for the Chinese carrier, PacificNet said Tues. The service will include “multimedia” entertainment and financial content, the company said.
At our deadline, there were rumors the FCC may delay a vote on the AT&T-BellSouth merger, which could delay the Oct. 12 agenda meeting. The FCC has scant time to weigh the merger order, which many believe will include conditions negotiated among the commissioners. With the commissioners only now back from Cal. media ownership hearings and Mon. a federal holiday, they will only have 2 days to discuss the order, a source said. Chmn. Martin is to be in China the week of Oct. 16, so the vote may have to wait until the next week.
Mobile DTV to notebook PCs will take off internationally in 2007-2008, said Ernest Tsui, Intel DTV architect. “Right now is the time to prepare the platform,” Tsui said last week at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in San Francisco. “2007 and 2008 will be where the hockey stick really starts to take off, not only for the U.S.” but also Europe and China, gearing up for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he said: “Broadcast sports events… where everybody’s watching is really going to spur this mobile DTV growth.” No longer will a fan need to miss a game while shopping with a spouse, Tsui said. In contrast to cellphones’ tiny displays, a notebook screen viewed at normal distance fills the eye as much as a 50” TV from 8’, he said: “It basically is filling up your field of view, and it’s a very good display, so it’s equivalent to your high-definition screen at home,” Tsui said. Notebook TV is enabled by better battery life, he said. Laptops will get broadcasts over WiMAX and cellular networks, though cellular reception creates interference risks, Tsui said. Even at 320x240 resolution, 8 min. of video eats bandwidth equivalent to 240 min. of cellphone talk time, so mobile carriers will build broadcast networks to avoid swamping their cell systems, he said. The mobile DTV technology in handhelds won’t suffice in notebooks, which can’t be repositioned as easily to improve reception, Tsui said. The technology also must coexist with a notebook’s other wireless technologies, he said. A particular challenge is dealing, via receiver filtering, with a choice of cutting off GSM or the upper 10-20 UHF channels, Tsui said. He focused largely on Asia in his remarks, the last in a series at successive IDFs on mobile DTV around the world. Few projections are available, but Intel expects the medium’s growth in the region to track the huge growth expected in mobile TV handsets, he said. Tsui’s own spot tests riding around in Tokyo, Shanghai and Taipei registered signal-to- noise ratios of 34-38 dB, considerably better than the 10-15 needed, he said; this shows “you can get adequate signal levels” even with a small antenna. China’s recently adopted DMB-T/H standard offers even higher mobility than Japan’s ISDB-T and S. Korea’s T-DMB -- in contrast to the U.S.’s ATSC, which allows none, he said. And China’s standard supports full 1080i HDTV up to about 60 mph, unlike the QVGA normally enabled by its neighbors’, Tsui said. “Enhanced ATSC will try to improve mobility, but it’s still not OFDM [orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing], and that’s sort of one of the prerequisites” of mobile HD, he said.