EchoStar Affiliate to Provide S-Band Capacity for China's Mobile TV Project

HONG KONG, Feb. 23, 2007/Satnews Daily/ ― China Satellite Mobile Broadcast Ltd (CSM) has selected China Mobile Broadcasting Satellite, Ltd. (CMBSat), Hong Kong-based affiliate of EchoStar Communications Corp., as the primary provider of S-band satellite capacity for China's mobile video project. CSM is part of the Wireless Bureau of China's broadcast regulator, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).

Li Zhi, CSM chairman and director general of SARFT's Administrative Bureau of Radio Stations, said China would launch a mobile video solution before the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics. The selection of satellite capacity from CMBSat marks an important development milestone in the project.

"Building an S-band satellite capable of delivering a national service across all of China is a challenging technical endeavor. CMBSat's team has both the technical and project management skills and the commitment to the CMMB mobile video standard developed by the CMMB Work Group that we deem essential in our partners," Li said.

In October 2006, SARFT announced that the Chinese Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting standard (CMMB) was approved for the transmission of mobile video broadcasting. CMMB is based on a homegrown technology called STiMi (Satellite and Terrestrial Interactive Multi-service Infrastructure).

STiMi enables direct-to-mobile transmission in the S-band and boosts indoor coverage via terrestrial repeaters. Its IP-based transmissions use the 2.2GHz frequency and an OFDM waveform with an improved link budget that employs codes.

Once CMMB becomes mandatory, however, it will effectively block the potential China-wide deployment of competing standards such as Europe's DVB-Handheld, Qualcomm's Media-FLO and South Korea's Terrestrial-DMB. 

Analysts say CMMB appears quite similar to DVB-SH (Digital Video Broadcasting to Satellite Handheld devices), which is on the verge of commercial introduction in Europe. CMMB uses 25MHz of bandwidth to offer 25 video and 30 radio channels and some data channels.

Analysts think it likely the Chinese will use cellular-based unicast or multicast services to fulfill a promise to deliver mobile video at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Afterwards, a broadcast technology would be layered onto those cellular video services to form a multimedia hybrid network.

Chinese sources say CMMB comprises components such as transmission technique, video, audio, channel transmission and protocols. They said StiMi was ideal as a mobile multimedia broadcasting technology because of China's vast territory, complex landforms and unbalanced area development.

Wang Lian, deputy director of SARFT's Department of Science and Technology, said China's mobile TV standard would insist on self-innovation. "It will promote the integration of three network: the existing mobile communication network, re-transmission and the management and authorization to users can be used to construct a integrated mobile multimedia broadcasting network. In accordance with the international conventions, the main adopted mode is also the form of network transmission plus the retransmission of mobile communication."

EchoStar this week invested $40 million in South Korea's TU Media Corp., operator of a satellite-based mobile TV service that is the first in the world. The investment makes EchoStar the second-largest shareholder in TU Media, behind Korean wireless carrier SK Telecom.

TU Media has over one million subscribers to its service that uses the S-DMB (satellite digital multimedia broadcasting) standard. The S-DMB service was launched in May 2005 and currently offers 15 video and 19 audio channels.

TU Media believes it can hit 6.6 million users by 2010 and generate $1.1 billion in revenue. South Korea leads other countries in the rollout of mobile TV services.

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