French regulator Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel has awarded mobile broadcast TV licenses, but it seems to have issued the licenses on a channel basis rather than issue a license for the service and let the service provider choose the channels. Out of the 36 applicants 13 licenses were issued: “There are two new entrants, France Telecom’s Orange Sports and film director Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp TV. The other eleven are BFM TV, Canal Plus, Direct 8, Eurosport, I-Tele, M6, NRJ 12, NT1, TF1, Virgin 17 and W9” reports Telecom Paper, adding that CSA kept 3 channels for public broadcasters France 2, France 3 and Arte.

The service will be on the DVB-H standard, and the channels were chosen because they represent 48 percent of the national audience and between 72 and 75 percent of the private TV audience. Two of the channels are subscription based (EuroSport for 1 euro per month, and Canal Plus for 25 euros per month or 15 euros if the person already subscribes to the channel)—the other channels will be part of the basic mobile TV package which will “be paid for by mobile phone subscriptions or included in the cost of pocket TVs themselves”. If more spectrum becomes available because of the analogue switch-off another 15 channel licenses could be issued. At the end of last year there were 1.2 million users of mobile TV provided over mobile networks.

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