Nokia puts its shirt on DVB-H television

THE CELLULAR industry seems to have fallen in love with the concept of mobile TV and Nokia is no exception. Mobile TV also fits neatly with the theme of Nokia's Mobility Conference in Barcelona - 'Avenues to revenues'.

Yet the company has bet heavily on DVB-H as the winning technology in the mobile broadcast TV arena. According to Richard Sharp, vp for rich multimedia with Nokia, support for DVB-H will be rolled out across the company's entire product portfolio over time.

The catch is that in some territories - and the UK is one of them - the regulatory environment could prevent deployment of DVB-H until 2012.

In the meantime, other technologies are starting to make some headway including T-DMB which is a TV version of DAB - the standard behind digital broadcast radio. But Nokia general manager, Anssi Vanjoki, was extremely dismissive of this alternative. "It's a Korean technology and will remain so from here to eternity," he told the conference, responding to the INQ's question.

Vanjoki said the advantages of DVB-H were extremely clear and it was very definitely the technology gaining the most support from network operators.

Countries which will adopt DVB-H in 2006 will include Switzerland, Indonesia, Thailand, Germany and Russia, Vanjoki said.

So if Nokia's backed the wrong standard, it's in deep trouble.

Responding to criticism that Nokia is reluctant to work with the Beast of Redmond, Vanjoki pointed to the firm agreement the company has over ActiveSync. As well as Windows Media Player.

But what's this? He also claimed the pair were co-operating over DRM. That's funny. The INQ thought Nokia was backing OMA DRM against Microsoft's .wma (Windows Media Audio) protected format.

And talking of jokes, how do you pronounce O2 now that it has been acquired (almost) by Telefonica of Spain? Answer: "Oh. DOS." µ