Nokia admits DVB-H still not taking off

Is TV still mobile if no one sees it fail?

Nokia's head of internet services has admitted DVB-H isn't taking off in the way the firm had hoped, and that customers seem more interested in downloading content than watching broadcasts.

Niklas Savander told a conference in Helsinki: "We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads", Reuters reports. He also suggested "roll out is slower than... we anticipated a couple of years ago".

This should come as no surprise to anyone who watches TV. As the living room experience moves steadily towards an on-demand model, it seems perverse for the mobile-TV industry to be deploying a broadcast paradigm. There are situations where everyone wants to watch the same thing at the same time - sporting events or world-shaking news - but the rest of the time 3G networks seem to be sufficient for distributing video.

Nokia has pushed DVB-H very hard in Europe, and beyond, but there are still only 12 deployments worldwide (and three of those are in Italy).

Deploying a new broadcast network is very expensive, and operators are going to have to find innovative ways of clawing that money back if they're going to make any success of mobile video - and that's assuming that punters actually want to watch it anyway. ®