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Mobile TV Development:How to drive it ?

John YipChief Engineer

Radio Television Hong Kong10 March, 2008

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Mobile TVMobile TV

Anywhere

Personal

Interactive

Mobile TVMobile TVA natural extension of services on the ubiquitous mobile phone: it’s video@interactive.anywhere

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Delivery SystemsDelivery Systems

Frequency Bands

VHF, UHF, L-band, S-band

Broadcast Systems

ISDB-T, DVB-T/H/T2, ATSC-M/H, CMMB,S/T-DMB, MediaFLO

Cellular Systems

3G, MBMS/ Tdtv, 3.5G/ HSDPA, WiMax, LTE and UMB

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Delivery and Delivery and handsetshandsets

In-band systems offer economic benefits; common network resource sharing.

Dual-band handsets for both terrestrial UHF (urban areas) and satellite S-band (rural areas) eg DVB-SH and CMMB.

Multi-standard handsets also add flexibility.

Single 65nm SoC IC available soon, supporting multiple worldwide Mobile TV standards (ISDB-T, DVB-H, T-DMB etc.) in VHF, UHF and L bands.

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Generic Growth Generic Growth EquationEquation

• Generic growth equation for digital broadcast technology was introduced (in ABU DTV2007)

Driving Force (DF) = Function (soft and hard factors) = M (r, p, m, o) * H (G, g)

Driving Force

Regulatory (r)

Pricing (p)

Marketing (m)

Others (o)

Macroeconomic (G)

Geo-physical (g)

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Generic Growth EquationGeneric Growth Equation

For Mobile TV in a city, Driving Force:

DFm= Mm (r, p, m, o) * GDP/capita * T

where T, Terrain Factor (0 < T =< 1) , is a retarding factor. For comparing cities,

GDP/capita could be in PPP.

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Generic Growth Equation – Soft Generic Growth Equation – Soft factorsfactors

Regulatory factor

Government intervention ie strong leadership, or conversely, market-driven. Issues include RF spectrum usage, licensing for broadcast and cellular modes, technical standards.

Pricing factor a free-to-air model or penetration pricing helps create a critical mass, before deploying a pay model. Market competition is likely to be oligopoly.

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Generic Growth EquationGeneric Growth Equation

Marketing factor

Promotion could exploit the young generation’s attraction to fashionable handset designs / styles, social networking.

Other factors ContentConsumer habits Device variety, availability, functionalityQuality/ stability of received picture.

Technology, as reflected in pricing, device Technology, as reflected in pricing, device attributes and quality, is not explicitly attributes and quality, is not explicitly expressed. Consumers do not care about expressed. Consumers do not care about technology per se.technology per se.

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Metrics• Example: using the concept of a 5-point scale

for assessment (from ITU-R BS.1284-1)

5Excellent

4Good

3Fair

2Poor

1Bad

Applying metrics to IPTV in a hypothetical city :

r = 5, p = 4, m = 5, o = 3.9

(“o” being the geometric mean of the 4 sub-factors:

Content = 5, Consumer habits = 3,

Device attributes = 4, Quality = 4)

(Any one “bad” factor or sub-factor ruins the growth; zero point is allowed and one zero reduces DF to zero. )

So, geometric mean of the 4 soft factors (r, p, m, o) = 4.4

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Growth of IPTV in Hong Kong (as an example where the Driving Force is high)

Penetration: IPTV, HK (estimated)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48

Months

% T

VH

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Drive it - for Sustainable Growth

Rapid penetration does not translate directly to fast revenue generation.

Churn rate can be high in Mobile TV. Generate a critical mass with

penetration pricing plus heavy promotion, followed by affordable and smart bundling of high-tier content. High-tier content must be attractive, exclusive.

Value-added services are necessary.

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Government / Broadcaster / Telecom Operator : a tri-partie relation

In digital broadcast development, a “triangle” may be found among the government, broadcaster and telco.

This tri-partie relation could be translated into: regulatory frame-work, content services and network / terminal services.

Government

Broadcaster Telco

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Government / Broadcaster / Telco

A government is often pivotal in the successful rollout of new digital broadcasts in a country:

DAB and DTTUK

S. Korea

USA

Japan

ATSC

T-DMB

ISDB-T

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China has a high HDTV affordability index (AI) at country level, despite a relatively modest GDP/capita.

CCTV has introduced in Jan. 2008 a free national / general HDTV channel, prior to Olympics 2008, this easing consumers’ entry to HDTV.

Further example

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Government

A government could foster digital TV development by minimizing regulatory barriers and licence fees. One may recall the Coase Theorem (ABU DTV2007).

If development is slow, the government may push it, subjected to social cost-benefits.

The catch: under a weak business model, services collapse when the subsidy subsides.

The government could orchestrate consumer-education and provide support.

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Broadcaster Telecom Operator

Telco is a key player in some TV technologies eg IPTV, Mobile TV.

Cooperation is beneficial: cellular network for return path and for generating revenue.

Poor cooperation leads to one party going it alone, eg telco taking over content + network/ terminal services, or broadcaster taking over content + distribution services.

The new digital era of triple/quad play places new demands on cooperation.

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Terrain FactorTerrain Factor

The Terrain factor (T) for a city has been difficult to evaluate.

Signal path-loss models exist eg Okumura-Hata model, empirical COST-Walfisch-Ikegami model, etc.; they are mathematically complex and do not provide a simple index.

A heuristic approach based on Buildings is hence proposed, for a simple index.

T is assumed to be a function of building density and building heights.

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Terrain FactorTerrain Factor

• D is the building density (Buildings/A), where

A = area (sq. km) available for construction,

• H = non-linear grading point for buildings/A.

(Skyline ranking: www.emporis.com/en/bu/sk/st/sr

Points are given to buildings of 12 floors or more,

with a max. of 600 points for a builidng of 100+ floors.)

T (city) = Function (D, H)

= Function of √(D*H)

ie using geometric mean

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Terrain FactorTerrain Factor

The nth root of [√(D*H) ] is taken to be T, to reflect its weight in the generic equation.

Sample results are shown in Table 1, for n = 10. Changing n does not alter

the ranking. In Table 1, Hong Kong ranks highest

with T = 0.53, whilst for Beijing T =1 (the reference).

For comparison, the same band eg UHF applies.

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Table 1 : Terrain factor (T), for buildingsTable 1 : Terrain factor (T), for buildings

Cities Pop. (M)

Area

( km²) Buildings Points

B/ available

area (a)

Points/

available

area (b) v (a*b)

Power

(1/10)

T

(buildings)

Hong Kong 6.9 1,053 7,678 122,632 36.5 582.3 145.7 1.65 0.53New York City 8.3 800 5,587 36,648 14.0 91.6 35.8 1.43 0.61Seoul 1.0 616 2,871 16,558 9.3 53.8 22.4 1.36 0.64Singapore 4.4 685 3,798 14,653 11.1 42.8 21.8 1.36 0.65Paris 2.1 105 443 2,146 8.4 40.9 18.6 1.34 0.66Tokyo 8.1 621 2,769 11,654 8.9 37.5 18.3 1.34 0.66Sao Paulo 11.0 1,523 5,093 13,709 6.7 18.0 11.0 1.27 0.69Mumbai 11.9 621 864 3,428 2.8 11.0 5.5 1.19 0.74Bangkok 7.6 1,569 747 11,787 1.0 15.0 3.8 1.14 0.77Jakarta 9.3 661 342 3,980 1.0 12.0 3.5 1.13 0.77London 7.2 1,579 1,369 2,777 1.7 3.5 2.5 1.09 0.80Shanghai 9.1 6,639 946 13,605 0.3 4.1 1.1 1.01 0.87Guangzhou 6.6 7,434 479 9,904 0.1 2.7 0.6 0.95 0.93Sydney 4.2 12,144 851 4,271 0.1 0.7 0.3 0.89 0.99Beijing 7.7 16,808 868 6,065 0.1 0.7 0.3 0.88 1.00

N.B. Available area for HK = 0.2*area, and for other cities = 0.5*area

T (buildings): a retarding factor, not including satellite mode and hills. Normalized, ref. Beijing.

Data (Columns 1 to 5, Cities --> Points) : Copyright, Emporis 1/2008

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Mobile Reception Tests Mobile Reception Tests (HK)(HK)

Hong Kong is a densely built-up city, with a population density ranking third in the world, at 6,350/ sq. km (average), reaching over 50,000/sq. km in some areas.

Its building density (D), based on available construction area, is one of the highest in the world.

Mobile reception tests have been conducted (Ref.: OFTA,

www.ofta.gov.hk/en/report-paper-guide/report/technical.html

)

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Mobile Reception Tests Mobile Reception Tests (HK)(HK)

First 3 sets of mobile test results :

(i) Satisfactory outdoors (VHF 11B, SFN, 384 kbps DAB video);

(ii) Satisfactory outdoors (UHF Ch. 47, DVB-H, QPSK, code rate ½), for

90% locations. Indoor reception: extra 16 dB mean loss at 14 locations and reception failed at 50% locations, at distances > 5m from the first wall of building, near ground levels;

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Mobile Reception Tests (HK)Mobile Reception Tests (HK)

(iii) Satisfactory outdoors (using similar parameters), but indoor reception requiring extra 16 dB signal could not be assured in the vicinity of the test routes.

(Additional results have been released in March, 2008)

Hence, reception in open areas seems satisfactory but indoor reception is major issue to be tackled.

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Indoor ReceptionIndoor Reception The law of diminishing returns applies to

investment in improving indoor coverage.

Cellular streaming on 3G/ 3.5G could supplement. Stop-gap measures: WiFi (802.11) indoor repeaters.

In future, WiMax, LTE and UMB, using OFDM and MIMO on cellular wireless, could enhance indoor TV viewing on mobile devices eg using femtocells (low power home base stations) on 3G or Mobile WiMax.

Consumer habits need to be studied to assess subscriber demand, delivery alternatives and the business case.

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Mainland ChinaMainland China

Over 520M mobile subscribers and 80M high-end mobile phones.

Dazzling potential for Mobile TV. Broadcast mode has advantages

over cellular mode, ie without network-speed bottlenecks.

Standardization is evolving as systems are being assessed.

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Hong KongHong Kong

DTT with HDTV was rolled out, from Dec. 31, 2007.

Uses the Chinese National Standard GB 20600-2006.

An extension of the synergy to Mobile TV could help improve the economies of scale in implementation and also in Mobile TV roaming.

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SummarySummary

Mobile TV offers mobility and interactivity for personal viewing: a natural service extension.

Broadcast Mobile TV technologies can provide economical multi-channel services to an unlimited number of viewers without bottlenecks as in cellular networks.

A successful business model for sustained growth is likely to involve the telco for generating revenue from interactivity.

Techno-economic issues and the Terrain factor have been elaborated and exemplified.

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Drive your mobile TV hard and make it fly .... Thank you.

(Use slide show and to animate.)

IPTV DevelopmentHDTV DevelopmentDigital TV DevelopmentSearchable on Google, etc.