On the occasion of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Alcatel announced the launch of its "Unlimited Mobile TV for Mass Market" project, a unique combination of DVB-H-based terrestrial and satellite broadcast delivery in the S-Band, complementing existing 3G/UMTS networks. Alcatel's approach allows operators to protect and leverage their 3G investments while offering unlimited coverage, unlimited audience, unlimited number of TV channels and maximum interactivity.

This innovative solution offers major advantages such as cost savings and limited environmental issues, broadcast with optimized quality coverage in urban indoor environments, access to an available telecommunications frequency band (S-Band¹) homogenized at the European level, and instant multi-country nationwide geographical coverage.

• For the broadcast of a significant number of mainstream TV channels, Alcatel offers to reuse 3G radio sites and antennas and to extend them with S-Band repeater capability, providing optimized quality as well as indoor and urban coverage. This solution offers an easy integration with existing mobile sites and antennas, whether based on Alcatel's infrastructure or not. Furthermore, in the case of sites using an Alcatel infrastructure, operators will be able to reuse the Alcatel Node Bs themselves thanks to Alcatel's Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach.
• In addition, Alcatel's Content Management & Service platform provides interactivity and personalization (e.g. community services, chat, voting, click-to-buy, etc...) allowing seamless access to related services as well as cross-advertising opportunities on any combined unicast and broadcast network.
• A case in point, the dynamic allocation feature allows the network operator to select the channels to be broadcast dynamically, i.e. changing over the time. This feature is of high interest to improve overall bandwidth management (e.g. when a specialty channel becomes a mainstream channel on a special occasion, or when the audience of a channels evolves over time).

Phil Taylor, Director, Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice, declared: "The hybrid architecture for unlimited mobile TV proposed by Alcatel, that combines satellite coverage with a terrestrial coverage reusing existing mobile sites with S-Band capability, deserves industry's support. I reckon it will allow operators to leverage their 3G assets while providing end-users with a full geographic coverage for mobile TV with a good reception quality indoor and outdoor. I think the fundamentals of this proposition are good, in particular with DVB-H mobile phones in the S-Band already on track."

Olivier Coste, President, Alcatel Mobile Broadcast added: "After taking the lead to make IP-TV a major success on fixed networks, Alcatel is dedicated to the advent of Mobile TV for the mass market. The hybrid terrestrial and satellite architecture proposed by Alcatel has a great potential to deliver upon its promises, to allow operators leverage both their existing assets and the availability of the S-Band frequency range across continents. Thanks to this solution, Mobile TV is bound to become easily accessible and affordable to a very large number of people in Europe and in the rest of the world."

Alcatel's mobile interactive TV applications allow further interactivity and personalization, allowing to complement traditional live TV with new mobile interactive TV contents. As a result, Alcatel today enables more than 20% of all mobile TV users in the world.

¹The S-Band is a telecom frequency band reserved for satellite usage, which is immediately adjacent to the 3G/UMTS spectrum and is available across continents