The European Union (EU) and the People’s Republic of China are collaborating on a new mobile TV project based on the Digital Media Broadcasting (DMB) standard.
As part of the two-year, EU-funded project — dubbed MODIBEC — government representatives, trade bodies and members of the private sector from the two regions will work together to promote and support DMB-based mobile TV development projects. Among the partners involved are WorldDMB, the international trade organization for DAB/DMB; Motorola; Thomson; Siemens; China Satcom; Blaupunkt; PTV; and Beijing- and Shanghai-based broadcasters and several Chinese manufacturing organizations.
According to a press statement issued by WorldDMB announcing MOBIDEC, DAB and its family of standards, which includes DMB, is one of the only European multimedia broadcasting standards accepted for digital broadcasting by SARFT, China’s state broadcasting regulator. DAB licenses have already been approved in four Chinese districts to broadcast both audio and multimedia mobile TV services using DMB, while DMB services are on air in Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian and Guangdong Province (Pearl Delta region).
WorldDMB expects that DMB mobile TV technology will become one of the two standards available in China for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. The second standard is CMMB, a suite of terrestrial and satellite digital television standards developed by Chinese technologists specifically for the Chinese market.
The MOBIDEC project will hold three workshops in China in August dedicated to encouraging European and Chinese researchers and experts in digital broadcasting and mobile communications to work together in developing techniques and solutions furthering cooperation between the two regions.
For more information, visit www.worlddab.org.
