Radio or TV? The role of satellites in mobile broadcasting

With the success of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio in the US, and the increasing interest in mobile TV services in the wake of successful trials by European mobile operators, new systems are now being proposed for satellite radio and multimedia broadcasting in Europe. Worldspace has now received authorization from the FCC for launch of their new Afristar 2 GEO satellite to provide services in Western Europe, while Ondas has received an investment from Delphi for its proposed elliptical orbit pan-European satellite radio system. In addition, Alcatel has been developing a proposed S-band mobile TV system, based on the DVB-H standard, and Eutelsat is contemplating inclusion of an Sband payload for mobile TV on its W2A satellite scheduled for launch in late 2008. These latter two systems are expected to resemble the Asian MBSAT S-DMB system, which provides both video and audio programming to specially designed mobile phones, and has captured around 500,000 customers in South Korea since its launch in May 2005.