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Another contender is the Alcatel-Lucent backed DVB-SH, with the French giant claiming that its strongest targets are Spain and Poland, which "have no spectrum", as sources told us at the Mobile TV World Congress in Paris recently. This is despite the fact that these countries both have strong DVB-H trials.

But indeed, although it initially seemed that Spain had just put off spectrum allocation while it held elections, now the Minister of Industry there has confirmed the Alcatel view, saying that the regulatory changes will not be completed until the tail end of 2008, meaning build-out would be in 2009 and services would start in 2010. The UK has similar, if not worse, problems and this has the country's cellcos looking for an interim solution. So Orange and T-Mobile have agreed to use the TDtv system in their spare 5MHz of TDD spectrum, planning a commercial trial in London, and then the launch of a 100-channel system.

If the Alcatel-Lucent source is accurate, then Poland will be faced with the same dilemma after its DVB-H trial and the splintering of technologies across Europe will be unavoidable despite the EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding pushing through DVBH as the 'approved' European standard for mobile TV.

There are, or have been, DVB-H trials in at least 17 of Europe's 27 countries, and this includes the big ones - UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain - but of these only Italy has a live service (in fact two) and France and Germany are hoping to launch services during 2008, with Austria and Switzerland also expecting service launches. Ironically the countries that are not yet in the European Union, but likely to join, including Croatia, also have DVB-H trials, and are likely to have a better chance of freeing up spectrum than the existing members.

DVB-H should not be the only standard for Europe because many countries on the borders of France, Germany and Italy will not have any kind of mobile TV until a year after their digital TV switchover, when there may possibly be some UHF spectrum to use for mobile TV. Many cellular operators are planning a leap straight to mobile internet and that could use up huge swathes of spectrum, shared, as it might be by auction, between three or four cellular players per European country. Waiting until 2012 or so only to find that you are outbid for spectrum is not a good outcome for any business that relies on mobile TV - whether that be broadcasters or tier two cellcos.

So the question that many operators around Europe are asking is 'what can I put in place for now?' and at the head of that queue will be Orange and Vodafone - both of which have huge unicast TV services, eating up cellular spectrum. We have been told by Orange that if it does not move some of its mobile TV off unicast by the end of 2008, it will no longer be able to add more 3G customers. The biggest crunch for Orange is in France, where there will be a DVB-H service by the end of 2008, and it has bid for two channels of its own. It can also try Alcatel's DVB-SH, and perhaps augment its own channels with that technology or with MBMS.

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