Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[Jim Mullens]

kqc re: MediaFLO article...+ incredible admission in another article...

More good news, but the journalistic community can’t seem to get this exactly right >>>>

”To increase the global competitiveness of MediaFLO, Qualcomm has decided to make essential patents of the technology open to CDMA and WCDMA handset makers without licensing charges, the sources indicated. In addition, Qualcomm has been actively promoting MediaFLO in Japan, China and Taiwan, the sources pointed out.”

IMO, more correctly stated would be >>>>

Consistent with QUALCOMM's standard terms and conditions of providing access to all of its IPR including new patents within the framework of the license , QUALCOMM will license its essential FLO patents for use in multi-mode CDMA/FLO handsets with no increase to its standard royalty rate for CDMA-based handsets.

This article “Incompatibility dogs mobile TV” was quite revealing re: DVB-H with these snips>>>>>>

“Among the challenges cited here last week at IBC, Europe's biggest broadcast technology conference, are a persistent lack of interoperability, quality-of-service issues and a nonexistent certification process for any of the handful of competing mobile-TV

Even within a single standard like DVB-H, the fragmentation of specifications--including different conditional-access systems, different digital rights management (DRM) schemes and diverging feature implementations--has become a nightmare for network operators.”

*****This last snip says it ALL*****

Reimers said, "I am not sure we could have afforded the delay of another year" in DVB-H. The lost time might have given competing mobile-TV standards the chance to horn in.

****Couldn’t be referring to QUALCOMM’s MediaFLO, could Reimers?****

Incompatibility dogs mobile TV
Interoperability a concern as the first rollouts test waters
Junko Yoshida
(09/18/2006 9:00 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193001247


AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — As mobile TV gears up in earnest, operators and handset vendors are finally coming to grips with a slew of problems that are impeding its uptake--including some of their own making. Among the challenges cited here last week at IBC, Europe's largest broadcast technology conference, are a persistent lack of interoperability, quality-of-service issues and a nonexistent certification process for any of the handful of competing mobile-TV standards.

Asked what the industry has learned from this summer's mobile-TV trials and commercial rollouts throughout Europe, Paul Werp, business director for mobile connectivity solutions at Texas Instruments Inc., said, "One word: interoperability."
Indeed, the industry's two biggest unfulfilled needs are "rock-solid interoperability" and "economy of scale," said Darragh Ballesty, product-marketing manager for mobile digital TV products at Silicon & Software Systems (S3), a Dublin, Ireland-based middleware supplier.

The IBC event also brought some good news, albeit spotty. The Italian mobile operator 3Italia says it signed up 110,000 DVB-H subscribers in just the first five weeks of mobile-TV operations this summer. Finland has also started commercial mobile-TV services. And this fall, BT Movio in the U.K. will roll out DMB-IP-based commercial digital TV and radio services.

Qualcomm Inc., pushing its homegrown Forward-Link-Only (FLO) technology for mobile TV, also disclosed at IBC that it's giving FLO away free to CDMA phone manufacturers. The company has signed up Newport Media Inc. as the first silicon vendor outside Qualcomm's own semiconductor division to develop a FLO-based mobile-TV chip set.

Despite the flurry of activity in Europe, mobile-TV broadcast isn't happening in the United States--at least not commercially as yet. Eighteen months ago, many industry experts predicted that North America would be the first region to implement mobile-TV broadcast services based on the Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) standard. The key to this prediction: Modeo, formerly Crown Castle, which owns 5 MHz of spectrum in the 1,670- to 1,675-MHz range.

But Modeo has yet to sign up a single cellular operator to help start mobile-TV broadcasts to its subscribers.
Qualcomm, in contrast, has made a deal with Verizon Wireless--the largest cellular operator in the United States--as a FLO-based mobile-TV distribution partner. Qualcomm's subsidiary MediaFLO USA is scheduled to run its service across 6 MHz of bandwidth in the 700-MHz range, on UHF channel 55. However, it's far from clear whether Qualcomm will be able to make significant revenue from mobile TV during 2007.

The fledgling U.S. mobile-TV market has seen the emergence of yet another player, HiWire Mobile. The company, scheduled for a DVB-H broadcast trial this fall in Las Vegas, will operate in the 700-MHz band, in MediaFLO territory.

Michael Schueppert, CEO at Modeo, acknowledged that "the largest U.S. mobile operators are not yet as fully engaged with mobile TV as we would like." The reason, Schueppert said, is "primarily because they [operators] are waiting for the technology to mature and for nationwide networks to be available."

Exactly how long all that will take is anybody's guess.
Even within a single standard like DVB-H, the fragmentation of specifications--including different conditional-access systems, different digital rights management (DRM) schemes and diverging feature implementations--has become a nightmare for network operators. Many of them can't find multiple sources for handsets that interoperate with their choice of headends. That, in turn, makes them reluctant to commit to commercial mobile-TV broadcast services. The fragmentation of profiles is also discouraging, since phone makers cannot afford to keep developing different handsets for every permutation of a given standard.

"There is no guaranteed interoperability at this stage," said Ulrich Reimers, chairman of the DVB Project's Technical Module--especially when Internet Protocol datacast protocol stacks are added on top of the DVB-H standard. Too many operators, eager for the the first mover's advantage, "have fiddled around with the implementations of IP datacasting, video codec and service protection systems," said Reimers, a professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. He acknowledged, however, that "some moves in the industry [are] forcing operators to go back to full standards compliancy."
Some blame Modeo for instigating a breach within the DVB-H community. The company hastily adopted Microsoft Corp.'s proprietary DRM and Windows Media codec a year ago, instead of the DRM and the H.264-based video codec set forth by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). But many industry observers pointed out last week, "Look where they are now."

"Modeo had to go off the road," said defender Adam Berger, the chief technology officer at Penthera Technologies Inc. (Pittsburgh), a developer of mobile-TV software for Modeo. That's because "the market was already insanely fragmented, and the OMA's DRM wasn't ready when Modeo needed it," he said.
But other industry observers said that by choosing HTC as its handset partner, Modeo alienated the mobile-handset community. No handset maker is willing to invest in the Modeo-specific mobile-TV network until Modeo finds cellular partners.
Moreover, S3's Ballesty observed, as "operators look for the cheapest cost-per-bit broadcast system to mobile phones, we see some of them already swapping out their headend systems." Such moves send a panic signal to handset vendors, forcing them to scramble to make their handsets interoperate with a whole new headend system. While S3 hopes to fill in the blanks for handset vendors with its middleware, the software layers necessary to enable different services and networks are exponentially growing.

Wanted: certification process

Traditionally, "self-certification" has been the modus operandi in TV broadcasting. But mobility compels TV handsets to comply with a telecommunication standard, making a much more rigorous validation and certification process almost mandatory. Most handset vendors today that can receive and decode just two mobile-TV video streams provided by an operator declare themselves "interoperable."

In reality, how a mobile-TV device talks to a DVB-H network and to servers in the mobile-TV service infrastructure is far more complex—especially when IP-based downstream channels are added to the architecture. Variables include ways to offer essential interactivities such as service discovery and selection, service purchase and content protection. "As a standard has a lot of options, you need to specify profiles. You must decide which functions are needed, and how you will use them," said Claus Sattler, executive director of the Broadcast Mobile Convergence (BMCO) forum.

Looking at the current DVB-H market, full of players with different approaches to implementing the standard, the DVB Project's Reimers wonders,"Should I have put in place a certification process before launching DVB-H?" His answer: "I don't know." Recalling the GSM launch in Europe, which delayed GSM phone rollouts for a year while the certification process was completed, Reimers said, "I am not sure we could have afforded the delay of another year" in DVB-H. The lost time might have given competing mobile-TV standards the chance to horn in.

Mission: Win Cingular

One saving grace for the mobile-TV industry is that key players are coming together in an effort to determine implementation guidelines so as to ensure DVB-H interoperability.

The BMCO forum in Europe has completed its mobile-TV profiles for DVB-H. Similarly, in the United States, handset vendors and chip companies last week disclosed a North American set of profiles for DVB-H-based mobile TV, according to Yoram Solomon, director of strategic marketing and industry relations for TI's mobile connectivity solutions group. Solomon is also president of the Mobile DTV Alliance.
Some in the MDTV Alliance privately called the group's mission "to win Cingular"--the second largest cellular operator in the United States--for the DVB-H camp.

There is a persistent concern that sets of DVB-H profiles defined by BMCO and the MDTV Alliance are diverging across the Atlantic. Solomon said, however, that his group adopted as much of BMCO's version as it could.

Beyond specific DRMs, copy protection schemes and content formats, the profiles agreed upon by the MDTV Alliance include transmission parameters, network and transport protocols, an interface to electronic service guides, interactive channels, recording functions and device management, among others.
Further, the MDTV Alliance hopes to accomplish something BMCO hasn't yet pulled off--a certification process. Because the alliance is already fragmented, with member Modeo diverging in its choice of a media codec, DRM and service platforms, the U.S. group plans to develop a "network-specific" interoperability certification test platform by mid-December, Solomon promised.