MODIBEC News: Conclusions of MODIBEC National Research Development and Policies

European Union and China regions try to influence the direction of the development by introducing research and development programmes like the "7th Framework Programme" of the European Commission or the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" of the Chinese government. The programmes are coordinated by governmental institutions like the NSFC or SARFT and funding is issued to cover the costs for certain important developments. In addition to the official institutions, also private companies, public bodies or other private institutes offer funding in different ways, for example grants for students, loans for certain investments, or the financing of complete research projects (ESI, EUREKA).

Since there is currently no central data base available, it is difficult to extract all those projects that are only related to the topic of the MODIBEC project. The European Commission is clearly promoting the DVB standard for all member states, but within the national borders, different approaches exist. National governments and local industry have sometimes different interests, and the recommendations coming from the EU are not always followed. Like in the UK or in Germany, consortia of private companies try to establish those standards which fit into their market interests.

In contrary, China is trying to protect its market by introducing own national standards, which are not always compatible with European plans. Respectively, national research programmes and priorities are developed and promoted. China for example seems to favour CMMB and DAB/DMB is considered more mature than DVB-H. In the case of UMTS and DAB, there seems to be a common understanding, since many market players in China have already adopted this technology, and licences have been issued by the responsible national institutions (for example SARFT).

In the field of mobile telecommunication China has caught up with Europe regarding numbers of subscribers and used technology. UMTS is used in both parts of the world, whereas China additionally develops its own 3G standard (TD-SCDMA).

In the field of digital broadcasting the gaps between both are still more visible. Whereas in Europe the coverage of DAB is high since many years (but not necessarily known by users), and mobile TV and multimedia channels offered already in some regions, DAB was introduced in China as the official standard just recently last year. 4 DAB licenses have been awarded to broadcasters in China, who have already rolled out services. Mobile TV based on other standards like the Chinese CMMB (STiMi) are still concentrated on tests and trials in certain selected cities. DVB-H has been tested in laboratories but due to the fact that no frequencies have been issued by SARFT, there have been no trials of the service in China. It is expected that the availability of mobile TV services to the end user (based on DMB) will strongly increase until (and after) the Olympic Games in 2008.

In addition, China is willing and has already proven, that it can develop its own national standards in order to protect the market and become independent from licence regulations with international companies. Examples are mentioned in the above paragraphs. The advantage for China in this situation is the enormous local market growth in general and the huge potential customer base, that seems large enough to satisfy the needs for a variety of national and international operators. Both fields, digital broadcasting and mobile telecommunication, are still attractive market segments for companies in this country, and the relative restricted issuance of licences by governmental institutions seem not to slow down the process.

In contrary, in the European Union the market is already saturated, at least in the area of mobile telecommunication. Operators are searching heavily for new market opportunities, but even the promises of UMTS seem more or less low profile. The use of this new technology is still very expensive for the end user and successful mobile applications are concentrated on navigation, mobile Internet (still mainly GPRS), ring-tones and music downloads. More high-end services like movie downloads and online-games (in general multimedia) are still playing a minor role in revenue generation. In the field of digital broadcasting the situation is different. Mobile TV such as DMB and DVB just emerged a few years ago and the coverage is not yet satisfying for end users. DAB is available since many years but lacked attractive receiver models and content. Some countries in Europe are more advanced than others, and the market regulation is different in each member state especially with regard to spectrum access for non-conventional broadcasters for the provision of mobile broadcasting and convergent multimedia services.

It can be outlined that the technologies used in the European Union and in China regarding mobile telecom networks and digital broadcasting are partly the same, and sometimes they are replaced by national standards of single countries. One example in the telecom sector is the use of UMTS (WCDMA) in Europe and in China, whereas China develops an additional national standard (based on CDMA from Qualcomm) TD-SCDMA that is intended for example to save the country licence fees to European or US based consortia. A similar example in the digital broadcasting sector can be found with DVB-H and CMMB (STiMi), a national satellite based standard that is capable to cover the large territory of the country.

Source: MODIBEC D2.1 - National Research Development and Policies