Broadcast: Flying in the Open Sky

Policy Matters

Proposed Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2006

To promote, facilitate, and develop in an orderly manner the carriage and content of broadcasting.
To provide for regulation of broadcasting services in India for offering a variety of entertainment, news, views, and information in a fair, objective, and competitive manner and to provide for regulation of content for public viewing.
To provide for the establishment of an independent authority to be known as the Broadcast Regulatory Authority of India for the purpose of regulating and facilitating development of broadcasting services in India.
To treat airwaves as public property and to regulate the use of such airwaves in the national and public interest, particularly with a view to ensure proper dissemination of content in the widest possible manner

Global Forays

AT&T has embarked upon a telecom triple-play project christened Lightspeed to bundle phone services, Internet access, and IPTV. With an initial investment of $4.6 bn to create the necessary infrastructure, the company hopes to enter 19 mn homes by 2008.· TU Media, a consortium comprising telecom operators like SK Telecom, Toshiba, MBCO, and others, started digital multimedia broadcasting-satellite (DMB-S) service in 2005. The service offered 12 video and 20 audio channels to customers.
Irdeto Access has provided the DMB content security solution to TU Media. Irdeto extended its content security and management solutions for digital TV, IPTV, and mobile devices to develop a new conditional access system optimized for mobile broadcasting. The system is based on Irdeto Plsys system, a DVB conditional access system for large broadcasters on satellite, cable, terrestrial, and IPTV.
In Italy, 3 Italia, Vodafone, Telecom Italia Mobile, and Mediaset started offering digital broadcasting services in 2006.
Korea and China are among the early markets to use terrestrial digital multimedia broadcast (T-DMB), derived from the Eureka 147 digital audio broadcast (DAB) standard. And Qualcomm has developed the forward link only (FLO) platform for the delivery of multimedia content.
Using DVB technology, TVMobile in Singapore, connects over 1,500 buses besides other locations to broadcast live content including news and music.
Last year, Digita joined hands with Nokia to offer DVB-H service in Finland. The service comprising Voice TV and Kiss digital radio will initially cover Helsinki, Oulu, and Turku areas.
US is another active market for digital broadcasting. Last year, Modeo-a company owned by Crown Castle-announced its service initially for the New York City. Then SES Americom and Aloha Partners introduced Hiwire Mobile Television service with trials in Las Vegas.
In China, Shanghai Media Group and China Central Television are likely to roll out their services by the time of Beijing Olympics in 2008.
NTV-Plus, a leading direct-to-home (DTH) satellite service provider in Russia and the Ukraine with over 550,000 subscribers, has deployed Harmonic's IP-based Electra encoders for its new high definition service

While technology is there to accommodate new offerings, all business issues can be resolved, provided service providers are willing to migrate and adopt new technologies. Traditionally, in India, broadcasting has been the domain of TV channels, which have largely been dependent on conventional means of content transmission. They may not be ready to make any capital investment in the digital broadcasting infrastructure, as the market is not yet ripe for new services. So their return on investment will get deferred. The traditional cable operators won't have that financial strength to deploy digital equipment any time soon. The initial onus, therefore, will be on telecom service providers to develop the market and popularize the digital broadcasting systems by offering more content, data services to users.

The initial onus will be on telecom service providers to develop the market and popularize digital broadcasting systems by offering more content, data services to users

Today, for example, there are millions of users who download audio content (songs, etc) on their mobile phones. They can be encouraged to experience live audio and video broadcast without downloading. This is possible by using streaming technologies that eliminate the need of storing content on the device. The service will not only provide a more attractive option to the subscribers, but it will also open up new revenue streams for the service providers. With the proliferation of such content or data services, the cost of devices such as mobile TV-enabled handsets will come down while attracting more consumers and allowing operators to accrue more revenue per user.

However, in order to manage the blended services regime, operators need to offer innovative service plans to woo buyers who would like to have anytime, anywhere, and anytype service from the same operator. And the policy framework must encourage such business models to make them more sustainable. The cable and broadcast regulations, for instance, should be in conformity with the telecom laws to enable delivery of multiple services using different network platforms by the operators. The operators will be able to deliver QoS only when they hope to get significant returns on their investments.

At this gestation stage, all the technology deployment and marketing issues are just some teething troubles that are associated with the introduction of any new concept. And the digital broadcasting market will soon stabilize, as consumers will start getting value for their money.

Rakesh Raman
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in