Stuart Corner
Friday, 29 September 2006 18:56
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Yes and no. The way Telstra's new 3G network operates you will need lots of bandwidth because every subscriber watching a TV programme, video or whatever on their cellphone will need dedicated capacity. Even if they are all watching the same programme.
Cellular technology was designed for one to one communication not one to many. That's called broadcasting and there are a number of different ways of doing that to mobile devices that don't hog a chunk of bandwidth for ever user.
One method is called digital video broadcasting to handhelds (DVB-H) and really it's got nothing to do with cellular except that you bundle a DVB-H receiver with a cellphone, they share the same screen and you can use the cellular network to get a signal back and provide interactivity.
DVB-H is closely related to DVB-T (DVB -terrestrial), the technology used for Australia's digital TV services and uses the same range of frequencies but by using DVB-H in one DVB-T channel you can gat about 30 channels to a handheld.
Telstra has already participated in a successful year long trial of this technology in Sydney and it is perfectly understandable that it wants to get its hands on one of the two channels available for the launch of commercial services.
