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No one can refute that voice is the killer application for the any telecom network. It is equally true that no telecom service provider can sustain itself only on voice services, especially in the competitive, low tariff markets of India. The service providers have realized that data will one of the money spinners in the long run. However, of all their offerings, live video has been missing from their planning boards. They can argue that delivering pre-recorded video clips was also a value added services with video downloads. But, they could not offere live streaming video content to mobile devices-like the content received on the television sets-until very recently due to technical reasons.

Premium and branded content over the mobile networks-be it cricket or football scores or ring tones, music, and wallpapers-have always brought in good money for the operators. The 3G networks, which would support HSDPA and EVDO, promise high-quality video content over mobile phones, but they are some time away. The 3GSM World Congress has set June 2006 as the deadline to beam video channels to the mobile phones. Despite so much promise, delivering television content over mobile devices has been more in the trial stages in India.

How Satellite broadcasting works for TU-Media The satellite multimedia broadcasting enables delivery of content over the mobile terminals in a secure way with subscribers getting billed for only what they have used Source: Irdeto Access

While Indian operators struggle with creating a demand for video and data services, Korean and Japanese broadcasters are already broadcasting audio, video, and data-via satellite-to any compatible mobile device. What began as a concept in these countries a couple of years ago has now developed as a commercial service, which is also the first of its kind in the world.

The digital satellite multimedia broadcasting (DMB-S) service was started in May 2005 by TU Media, a consortium comprising telecom operators like SK Telecom, Toshiba, MBCO, and other stakeholders. And in less than three months, the service has already garnered over 98,000 subscribers. With TU Media's DMB-S service, customers get 12 video channels and 20 audio channels with a promise of adding several pay per view (PPV) channels in the near future.

Mobile Digital Broadcast Arrives
DMB signals are delivered to devices primarily via satellite, with terrestrial gap fillers providing coverage in shadow areas. This enables end users to enjoy multichannel, multimedia broadcasting via mobile multifunction devices like mobile phones, PDAs, and in-vehicle and other portable devices. The satellite technology overcomes coverage, relative speed, and cell handover issues that are experienced with traditional mobile networks.

Though the DMB-S services combines telecommunications and broadcasting and SK Telecom is a major stakeholder in TU Media, SKT's experience in mobile and broadband networks was of little use as the usage profile of mobile users changes dramatically in a broadcast scenarios.

Broadcasting over mobile devices has its share of problems. Spectrum, frequency, and network availability are omnipresent but issues like piracy, security of content, and billing need different skill sets to be dealt with. In a broadcast scenario, especially when it is wireless in character, the key to success lies in delivering content only to the paying subscribers. Not only is this a contractual obligation from the content providers, but it is also important to make sure that this attractive new revenue stream remains secured. Failure to adequately secure the content would result in content theft and depletion of revenues-which has a potential for huge losses.

Securing the Content
To secure its DMB content from theft, TU Media turned to Irdeto Access. Irdeto was already providing content security and management solutions for digital TV, IP-TV, and mobile devices. They developed a new conditional access system optimized for mobile broadcasting. The system not only provides proven security for mobile-content delivery but also offers great flexibility in the choice of devices used for receiving that content.

The new mobile content security system is based on Irdeto Plsys system, a DVB conditional access system for large broadcasters on satellite, cable, terrestrial, and IP-TV. The new system is compatible with a wide range of client devices and subscriber management systems.

In the DMB environment, bandwidth constraints are very high and the new solution reduced conditional access–related, bandwidth consumption significantly and improved security integrity by targeting large groups of customers (over 10 million subscribers) with a single conditional access message.

Apart from bandwidth and security, this solution had to keep in mind the usage pattern of the Korean people and support the Korean Subscriber Management Systems and Electronic Program Guides. Also, unlike in the regular TV channel broadcast model, in a mobile broadcast environment the user would not be always turned on. The rapid entitlement refresh technology took into account this nature of mobile subscribers and incorporated things like delivering important entitlement messages out-of-band, through SMS. It can also support multiple revenue models, including: subscription, prepaid, pay per time, impulse pay-per-view, and ordered pay-per-view.

Looking Ahead
The increasing mobile population across the globe is an indication of more and more applications would move to portable devices. Stock markets, sports, and entertainment are a few of the many segments that have been attracting attention of the mobile users. In countries like South Korea and Japan (where penetration of digital mobile devices is very high) online gaming is already very popular. The success of satellite radio over mobile devices in European countries is also an indication of how mobile broadcasting would shape up in the coming days.

In the future, consumers can expect the two versions of mobile broadcasting-satellite DMB and terrestrial DMB-to be displayed on a single mobile terminal. Mobile manufacturers are now developing high-end chips that can pick up signals from satellite as well as terrestrial DMB. They are also conducting research for producing a single chip that will combine satellite and terrestrial DMB.

Whether the satellite or the terrestrial variant, DMB technology offers service providers the ability to lock in customer loyalty and increase ARPU, and with companies like Irdeto Access eliminating the bottlenecks, business prospects for this service appear to be bright.

What's In It for India
In India, satellite broadcast has been considered the domain of TV channels and related production houses. Satellite has also been used as a broadcast channel for distance education and telemedicine. However, content security has not been a high priority and definitely, delivering these on mobile devices has not even come up on the planning tables yet. Leave aside telecom service providers, even the TV channels are not considering delivering video directly to the mobile population. Reasons for this reticence vary from market demand to technological barriers and other related issues.

However, the success of cricket- and cinema-related content over mobile networks is a good indicator that the demand is there. And, with companies like Irdeto Access already approaching the market with their products and solutions, customization for the Indian market should not be too difficult. They have done it for Korea and are doing it for China. They cannot afford to miss India. The responsibility now lies on the service providers and content developers to come forward and join hands to form consortiums like TU Media, and ring in a new broadcast experience for the mobile users.

Anurag Prasad