Commentary: Has CMMB already been selected as mobile TV standard in China?

The planned enactment of a national standard for mobile TV broadcasting in China got an apparent set back in November 2007 when the CMMB (China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting) camp supported by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) declined to participate in testing sponsored by China's Standardization Administration aiming to decide which mobile TV standard would be chosen as the national standard.

In addition to CMMB, four other technical standards – DMB-TH (DMB-terrestrial/handheld), T-MMB (terrestrial-mobile multimedia broadcasting), CMB (cell multimedia broadcast) and CDMB (China Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) – are also competing to become the national mobile TV standard in China.

While the Standardization Administration is planning to hold a new round of testing, the CMMB camp has apparently continued to ignore the standard-formation process with plans to install CMMB-compliant networks in 37 major cities in China.

In addition, the CMMB camp also plans to launch a satellite, codenamed CMMB-STAR, in June 2008 that will enable CMMB broadcast signals to reach a total of 324 cities by July.

With regard to the supply chain of CMMB, Beijing-based Innofidei Technology has begun volume production of CMMB core chips for use in handsets, digital video players and PMP (portable multimedia player) devices with total shipments of its CMMB chips to top over five million units in 2008.

For customer-end products, more than 200 makers and vendors, including China-based Lenovo and ZTE as well as leading vendors such as Nokia and Motorola, are also ready to roll out CMMB-compliant solutions. In addition, SARFT is also preparing content, either paid or free-of-charge, for CMMB broadcasts covering the whole nation or regions.

In other words, SARFT is building CMMB networks as a national standard, although it understands that the Standardization Administration is yet to select a standard and that its specifications are also subject to the approval of the administration.

However, since the CMMB plan initiated by SARFT was recently enlisted as one of the major technological development projects in China, entitling it to government subsidies of up to 400 million yuan (US$54.8 million) in three years, it has raised concerns that the CMMB standard might have already been selected as the mobile TV standard in China out of the public eye.

source