Govt. shelves plans for Mobile TV services

By Kul Bhushan | Updated on 12-Mar-2012

12-Mar-2012

The Information and Broadcasting ministry has decided to shelve its plans to launch Mobile TV services. The ministry has also decided to restrict Doordarshan’s digital capacity expansion. The decision comes after a ministers’ panel announced to allocate 700 MHz wireless spectrum band for the 4G telecom services.

According to reports, a policy for the launch of mobile TV service has been pending with ministry for several years because of unavailability of 96 MHz of spectrum in the UHF band. Presently, Doordarshan is only player in the mobile TV market. The ministry was likely to make Rs. 300 crore with the mobile TV services. However, unavailability of the spectrum and other factors prompted the government to reconsider its move.

Doordarshan had sought 82-646 MHz in Band V for its digital capacity expansion. Also, the ministry had sought 96 MHz for mobile TV. The department of telecom, on the other hand, was insisting on restricting I&B’s projection to only up to 646 MHz instead of 698 MHz. Defence Ministry also restricted I&B’s chances of getting more spectrum. It’s notable that with the availability of 4G telecom services, the industry does not seem very keen on mobile TV. “Our priority is providing a large bouquet of channels through DD to viewers who have a choice of digital cable and DTH. So, there has been a conscious decision to drop plans to offer mobile TV services in national interest and instead focus on DD’s digitization,” a senior source is quoted as saying.

Mobile TV was likely to help telecom operators by offering them circle-based terrestrial transmission licences on a dedicated bandwidth instead of conventional streaming on 2G and 3G spectrum. According to reports, Doordarshan needed new spectrum blocks in a bid to digitise and expand capacity, especially on the terrestrial platform. Consumers get DD channels directly from local television towers.

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