EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding has been making noises about how the mobile industry should adopt an EU-wide standard for mobile TV for a while, and the move is gathering steam with The Guardian reporting that she plans to ”next week call for a EU-wide approach to mobile TV, singling out a Nokia-backed broadcast standard as a possible candidate for wide-scale adoption”. I’m not entirely sure how the EU political process works, but a similar move ensured GSM was the standard mobile system across Europe. Some mobile TV networks have already been launched, of course, and The Guardian notes that Virgin Mobile in the UK has already launched a DAB service while BSkyB seems keen on MediaFLO. Some satellite operators are developing a service in the S-Band and there’s a DMB network in Germany. If a single standard is passed it will have to be DVB-H because it has both the highest number of deployments and the greatest number of uses (mostly in Italy). The big question will be spectrum—if the EU mandates carriers to offer DVB-H services, will it also pressure the governments to make the corresponding spectrum available?

• Reding Wants DVB-H Approved By EU
• FLO Forum Campaigns For Tech Neutrality In Europe