A question of standards

Dollars vs. Euros. Miles vs. kilometers. And now, FLO vs. DVB-H. As is so often the case, a given standard is radically different depending on which side of the Atlantic you're located, and when it comes to mobile TV, the U.S. and Europe are speaking separate languages. Days after the European Commission officially endorsed DVB-H as the E.U.'s official mobile TV standard, Virgin Mobile UK announced plans to terminate its struggling Virgin Mobile TV service, which operates via the rival DMB standard. It's a different story in the U.S., where DVB-H is losing traction. Broadcasting and mobile infrastructure provider Crown Castle this week effectively pulled the plug on its Modeo subsidiary's fledgling DVB-H service, announcing it will lease its nationwide 1670-1675 MHz spectrum for $13 million annually to a venture formed by Telcom Ventures and Columbia Capital.

By the time Crown Castle folded its hand, Modeo lagged some distance behind Qualcomm's MediaFLO USA subsidiary, which now looks like the U.S. front runner thanks to deals with AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The FLO standard's primary opposition for national supremacy is MobiTV, which counts among its partners Sprint. Modeo just couldn't find its foothold in the domestic market, where at least the basic concepts of competition and technology neutrality still retain some significance. Not so overseas, where next year the European Commission will consider making DVB-H mandatory.

But DVB-H in the U.S.A. (wasn't that an old John Cougar Mellencamp song?) isn't dead yet. Don't count out HiWire, which last week announced the content and channel lineup for its imminent Las Vegas consumer trials. According to HiWire, the trial will deliver up to three times as many channels as any rival U.S. mobile TV network, and commercial satellite operator partner SES Americom is currently in negotiations to add even more content in the days ahead. It will be interesting to see how Modeo's demise impacts HiWire. On the one hand, its biggest DVB-H challenger is now kaput, but on the other, the standard's future is now more tenuous than ever. The results of the trial should go far in determining whether what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or if HiWire and DVB-H can go national. - Jason