Japan Chooses Mobile TV Standard, KDDI: I MAD

The Japanese mobile telecom industry is considered to be one of the most advanced in the world.  Handsets are offered by carriers which feature multi-megapixel cameras with CCD sensors, embedded RFID for electronic wallets and mobile TV access.

Recently, Japanese telecom authorities came to a decision on which mobile television standard would be implemented in the country, with 1Seg championed by partially government-owned carrier NTT DoCoMo and the American developed MediaFLO (sold under the FLOTV, VCAST Mobile TV and AT&T Mobile TV brands) pushed by KDDI after taking time to decide on the relative merits of each standard.

As of today, NTT DoCoMo’s ISDB-Tmm (an evolution of the current ISDB-T network) has been chosen on a preliminary basis by Japanese telecom authorities as the basis for a nationwide mobile broadcast network once the country completes its digital TV transition in 2012, while KDDI’s proposal has been rejected in no small part due to the poor commercial performance of the MediaFLO standard in the US.

Of course, KDDI was upset by the move stating that the proposal should not have been judged solely by the commercial performance of the standard abroad and that it had technical advantages over DoCoMo’s winning proposal, even going as far as refusing to provide its programming for the future network .

Another factor in the decision is the fact that the infrastructure for ISDB-Tmm is already in place, as the current deployment already used for 1Seg in Japan will be utilized for the new network. However, KDDI still has time to appeal the decision and is expected to do so before a binding decision is made in the future.