media - Mobile TV: heading for disaster

Mobile Monday Shanghai convened this week to discuss the future of Mobile TV with a 5-person strong panel, representing a wide range of mainly foreign companies with an interest in the matter. Despite the generally optimistic tone of the speakers, at the end of the evening I found only one way to describe the developments: what a disaster.

China will be offering two ways into mobile broadband communication, 3G and mobile TV. Since 3G is a delivery method, it could also deliver mobile TV, but for China-specific reasons both tracks will be rather different. On Monday the panelists insisted that both systems would be complimentary, but stiff competition will also be unavoidable.

What is going wrong with mobile TV in China? There are at least two major problems. First, all major government departments and other stakeholders are involved in the regulatory process of mobile TV. The ministry of information industry (MII), the State Administration of radio, film and TV (SARFT), the traditional TV-stations, China Mobile. All these stakeholders hate each others guts, so it is very hard to get consensus about anything. Even an agreement on the standard that is going to be used does not exist. They agreed to stop the international standards, but otherwise there is no agreement. Most likely a Chinese standard is going to be used, but since that is not sure, no hardware or applications can be developed. When that agreement does not emerge very soon, the system will miss its political deadline: the 2008 Olympic Games.

Content is king, we learned on Monday too. Apart from pricing, adoptation by the consumers would depend on the content. That would be the first time in China, since official media were driven by political correctness and commercial greed, but never put the wishes of their audiences on the first place. Can we trust those traditional content providers, under the stifling direction of SARFT and other censorship systems, to focus on the wishes of the consumers?

During Q&A one person pointed out that adult content is the largest money maker for similar systems elsewhere in the world. It looks very unlikely were are going to see anything like that.

3G is not doing much better at this stage in terms of getting the official process rolling. Licensing providers might have been postponed till 2008, although big scale experiments are on its way and the Chinese standard of TD-SCDMA seems a sure winner. More important, the 3G track has been able to avoid the second pitfall that is now hampering Mobile TV. It is seen as a pure telecom project and will avoid any link with terms like "broadcasting". The main purpose: keep the SARFT-like forces out. The telecom companies have only one interest: recoup their investment as fast as possible.

In a few years time, we will all be enjoying mobile broadband for a afforable price, but just like when China adopted the internet: it just takes too long to get its act together.