June 2 2008

The Beijing Olympics will showcase more than mainland sporting and organisational ability. China's promise of a hi-tech Games means the nation's fledgling domestic mobile television sector is being treated as both a business opportunity and a means to show off its technological know-how.

But whether the service wins a gold medal with consumers remains to be seen, given that major regulatory issues still need to be sorted out. The mainland service - which will allow television audiences to watch their favourite programmes on the go through a newly constructed digital network - is already lagging behind those overseas, with different regulatory bodies and authorities struggling to agree on a national standard.

The impasse was seen as inevitable, given that mobile television straddles both broadcasting and telecommunications, falling through the cracks in the turf fight between regulators of both sectors. The broadcasting regulator, which controls content and ideology, wants to extend its influence by introducing a proprietor technology standard. At the same time, the telecommunications regulator, together with mobile operators, want to uphold their advantage of having a market with over 300 million mobile users to bargain for a leading role in any new service.

Ideally, the service should serve as a test to how regulators can work together to advance the domestic technology sector and widen the reach to urban consumers. Under existing rules, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has full responsibility over all content-related issues, including broadcasting channels and the programmes delivered to the audience. The Ministry of Information Industry is responsible for overseeing the communications sector such as broadband internet access, mobile telephone and fixed-line operators.

"For the broadcasters with official rights to distribute content, they need new digital channels to reach new users," said one industry watcher. "For telecommunications operators, they want content or TV programmes to stimulate growth in the broadband and mobile data businesses."

The nation's mobile television service can be divided into two categories. The first is the in-band mobile television service, which is delivered through the mobile network. China Mobile and China Unicom have already launched services on their 2.5G mobile network, enabling users to watch short video clips on mobile telephones.

China Mobile also would like to introduce a in-band service based on the homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G network. It will be one of the basic features for TD-SCDMA when it goes commercial this year.

The second category is known as off-band digital mobile broadcasting television. It differs from the in-band mobile service, where users select video clips on demand, by delivering various live television channels at the same time with users selecting the channels they want on their mobile telephone. Users may watch the same channels as their home television or subscribe to dedicated mobile television channels. The service is delivered through a newly established digital network on a specific spectrum that could be coupled with satellite signal to strengthen the coverage.

As with 3G mobile standards, Beijing is anxious to adopt a homegrown mobile television standard to strengthen the nation's technological status and avoid paying high royalty fees to foreign vendors. Before the country's homegrown standard came into play in recent years, three foreign mobile television standards had been adopted elsewhere - Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld, a Nokia-backed standard; Media Flo, a standard developed by Qualcomm, a CDMA technology owner; and T-DMB standard, a South Korean-based standard which has attracted over one million users in Korea since 2006.

With just two months to go before the Olympic Games open in Beijing, there are signs that the wrangling for control between regulators may be easing.

Despite the protracted turf fight, SARFT, along with various government departments such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, were the only ones to have developed a new standard called China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting (CMMB), making it the only national standard available this year and for mass launch during the Games.

But others have not given up, which is not unsurprising based on estimates that the number of CMMB terminals in the country will rise from 200,000 in 2007 to 33.4 million by 2010. Seventy per cent of terminals will be handsets, according to TELE Analytics, a research firm.

Researchers and vendors are developing other mobile television standards to compete for the official status of National Standard, an endorsement that comes from the National Standard Commission. At least five technologies are in the race, including Huawei Technologies' Cellular Mobile Broadcasting; the Tsinghua University-backed Digital Mobile Broadcasting-Tsinghua (DMB-TH) standard; T-MMB, a standard developed by Beijing Nufront Software Technology and supported by China Mobile, China Unicom and the Ministry of Information Industry; and the CDMB standard developed by the Chinese Standardisation Association.

Beijing apparently favours CMMB to be the only standard for digital mobile broadcasting television, as it has listed it as a focus project in the 11th Five-Year Plan. The Ministry of Science and Technology has also budgeted 400 million yuan (HK$449.7 million) in new funding for the research and development of CMMB standard.

"Having such strong government support has downplayed other potential mobile TV technologies, whether they are foreign technologies or homegrown standards," said Adrian Tong, an analyst at Media Partners Asia. "CMMB is undergoing a rapid roll-out in China. Since October, network implementation has been highly successful in Beijing, Qingdao, Shenyang, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Qinhuangdao.

"Recently, SARFT extended a second round of tendering for network construction in 37 cities that is due for completion before the Olympics."

The CMMB mobile television service was introduced this month in four cities - Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Guangzhou. Users need not pay a subscription fee for the service and they can enjoy seven live broadcast channels from China Central Television, including the Olympics, news and programmes for young people

"The CMMB signal in Beijing extends to the 4th Ring Road. The government has also launched a second round of tendering for CMMB equipment for large-scale network deployment in 37 cities," said Bin Liu, an analyst at researcher BEA.

In fact, the technology has achieved meaningful progress in maturity in recent months, making it harder for competing technologies and paving the way for a mass commercial trial before the Olympics.

Mr Liu said when Lenovo - one of the mainland's leading handset makers - recently launched a trial CMMB handset using Innofidei's chipset, the exercise showed that the technology provided satisfactory video and audio quality indoors.

SARFT has injected much effort into selling the CMMB standard overseas. India and Dubai had shown interest in introducing CMMB standard for their local mobile television service, he said. "CMMB satellites are expected to be launched in mid-2008, although SARFT still has lots of work to do in technology development, trials and network planning."

However, Mr Liu said that mobile television in the country was such a complicated issue that the government might not make a final decision for some time, given that there was a fierce battle among domestic standards backed by different interested parties.