One Qualcomm chip for three mobile TV standards

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 27 May 2006 03:48

Business IT - Technology

See also:
PCCW broadcasts real-time TV to 3G cellphones
BSkyB to trial Qualcomm's FLO cellular multicast technology

Qualcomm has announced a single-chip Universal Broadcast Modem (UBM) that supports three of the world's leading mobile broadcast standards: Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H), one-segment Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial (ISDB-T) and its own FLO technology. It will enable a common platform that handset manufacturers can leverage to address multiple standards.
The UBM is designed as a companion to Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem (MSM) baseband chipsets, but, Qualcomm says, can be used with other products. It can work with transmission across the full UHF bandwidth, 470MHz to 862MHz using 5, 6, 7 or 8MHz channels and supports single- and multi-frequency networks.

However its does not support the 3GPP's Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) which will be available both for GSM/EDGE and WCDMA. Mobile TV services based on MBMS are expected in the 2008 timeframe. A precursor to MBMS developed by Huawei underpins Hong Kong telco PCCW's recently launched TV broadcast service to 3G handsets.

The chip is designed to be compatible with both CDMA2000 and WCDMA/UMTS devices and is expected to ship in sample quantities in the first quarter of 2007.