S60 Open to new features

Jippii, after several years of pilots and trials Finnish mobile TV is ready for prime time. I should highlight this post is about DVB-H based mobile TV. Video streaming through the "traditional" data connections has been available already earlier in Finland by several operators. DVB-H however is a completely new data bearer and requires a new antenna, receiver chip etc. on the device.

The actual DVB-H network operated by Digita (a subsidiary of French TDF group) has been available since December last year. Only last week there was a significant milestone when the first commercial receiving device came available (that's Nokia N92) and both of the two national television broadcasters agreed to start programming on the network (MTV3 and Nelonen). The public broadcaster YLE is yet to start broadcasting due to some unclarified issues with the copyright compensations.

Finland is not the first country to start with DVB-H, the first ones were Italy and Vietnam (correct me if wrong). Finnish DVB-H network is not even nearly country-wide: it's only available in couple of cities (Helsinki, Turku and Oulu) but Digita claims 25 percent of population has the chance to start watching. Sadly Tampere where I live is not covered yet but this should be corrected before end of this year.

I've followed closely all of the mobile TV technologies being created and it's of course great to see DVB-H finally available. How succesful it becomes is of course a different question altogether. When compared to usual streaming video services it's at least faster and more reliable, and should be cheaper to all parties involved.

If you have the chance to visit our S60 Evening at Helsinki, I'll be around to show what's on air from a Nokia N77.

-Jukka