In a keynote speech on the first day of the 3GSM event in Cannes, Ericsson’s Chief Technology Officer Håkan Eriksson described how mobile triple play is fast becoming a possibility for operators. "With mobility as a key driver for consumer convenience, we believe the triple play is now going mobile," he said. "The evolved version of WCDMA with HSDPA is a key enabler for this, offering data rates similar to fixed broadband."

As it has been in the fixed-line domain, TV is showing itself to be the key component of any successful mobile triple-play offering. Most mobile TV offerings are currently unicast: for the medium to reach the mass market, it requires the deployment of a technology giving greater capacity than networks can currently provide. Yet operators still face uncertainty as to what this technology should be.

Peter Olson, Ericsson Vice President for Strategy and Product Management, explains where operators find themselves today with regards to delivering TV services. "Some operators are currently using WCDMA to test mobile TV and get a good idea of what it will be like when the mass market is enabled," says Olson. "But a new technology is needed for multicast services, and this is what we're bringing in as the next step."

Operators are focusing on two different technologies as multicast mobile-TV delivery options: MBMS and DVB-H. Of the two, Ericsson feels that MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) is the main track for operators, as it makes use of existing networks. "MBMS is easy to implement in the networks, the authentications are already built in, SIM cards are there for the billing mechanism, and so on," says Olson. "With DVB-H (Digital Video Broadband-Handheld), you still need to build the network, bring in the regulator and the broadcaster, and define the content that may be broadcast."

However, Olson points out that Ericsson understands operators may feel DVB-H is a better option for some markets and under certain circumstances. For this reason Ericsson’s service layer platform will be able to handle both technologies. "There may be a market for DVB-H in certain types of applications, such as laptop or in-car viewing, where you can exploit the fact that DVB-H is able to make use of a bigger screen," he says. "It’s really still too early to tell."