Korean Government licenses land based mobile TV services

The Korean government has recently instigated a spectrum competition for land-based mobile television services. This will allow the country’s three main carriers to extend TV programmes to handsets.

Korean officials have dubbed mobile TV services as Digital Media Broadcasting (DMB). These services are designed to beam TV, audio, and data broadcasts to handheld devices via satellite or land-based TV airwaves.

A government run institute claims that it expects 400,000 customers in the first year of operation of these services. Subscription to these services will grow by 191% annually,  gaining a total of 10.3 Million subscribers by 2010.

An interesting twist to this tale is that currently the Korean government broadcasting laws prevent TV stations for charging customers for accessing land-based broadcast signals, therefore the service will be free on mobile devices. Of course the incumbents are challenging this.

Industry watchers claim that the BMD services will attract a larger audience than its rival standard!