European Commissioner Digs In Her Heels on Mobile TV Standard

European Commissioner Viviane Reding says if necessary she will force her controversial move to have Europe adopt a specific technical standard for mobile TV. “If I need to make it mandatory I will make it mandatory,” Reding said during an interview at the DLD conference in Munich January 21. “It is in the interest of the industry to know where they are going.”

Reding caused waves last July when she recommended that all 27 European countries adopt a standard strongly associated with Nokia called Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds (DVB-H), rather than mobile broadcasting TV standards being tested in Europe by Qualcomm or one being promoted in Europe by South Korea, the first market in the world to launch mobile TV.

Reding argues that the decision by European governments in the 1980s to push GSM was good for Europe. It helped Nokia to become the world’s biggest handset maker and Sweden’s Ericsson to become the dominant telecom equipment maker. She believes Europe can repeat that success by once again encouraging governments, rather than the market, to decide on a single technical standard for mobile broadcast TV services. Industry players, from broadcasters to chip makers, disagree. They say governments should let the market decide and argue that there is room for more than one standard.

Lobbyists in Brussels are signalling that the opposition isn’t ready to give up yet.