Q What is the context ?
A The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and India’s public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati are exploring ‘direct-to-mobile’ (D2M) broadcasting.
Q What is D2M Technology?
A
- The technology is based on the convergence of broadband and broadcast, using which mobile phones can receive terrestrial digital TV.
- It would be similar to how people listen to FM radio on their phones, where a receiver within the phone can tap into radio frequencies.
- Using D2M, multimedia content can also be beamed to phones directly.
Q What are the benefits of D2M ?
A
- It allows broadcasting video and other forms of multimedia content directly to mobile phones, without needing an active internet connection.
- It promises to improve consumption of broadband and utilisation of spectrum.
Q What is the need D2M?
A
- The idea behind the technology is that it can possibly be used to directly broadcast content related to citizen-centric information.
- It can be further used to counter fake news, issue emergency alerts and offer assistance in disaster management, among other things.
- Apart from that, it can be used to broadcast live news, sports etc. on mobile phones.
- More so, the content should stream without any buffering whatsoever while not consuming any internet data.
Q What could be the consumer and business impact of this?
A
- For consumers, a technology like this would mean that they would be able to access multimedia content from Video on Demand (VoD) or Over The Top (OTT) content platforms.
- This will be without having to exhaust their mobile data, and more importantly, at a nominal rate.
- The technology will also allow people from rural areas, with limited or no internet access, to watch video content.
- For businesses, one of the key benefits of the technology is that it can enable telecom service providers to offload video traffic from their mobile network onto the broadcast network.
- It thus helps them to decongest valuable mobile spectrum.
- This will also improve usage of mobile spectrum and free up bandwidth which will help reduce call drops, increase data speeds etc.
Q What is the government doing to facilitate D2M technology?
A
- The DoT has set up a committee to study the feasibility of a spectrum band for offering broadcast services directly to users’ smartphones.
- Band 526-582 MHz is envisaged to work in coordination with both mobile and broadcast services.
- DoT has set up a committee to study this band.
- At the moment, this band is used by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting across the country for TV transmitters.
Q What are the possible challenges to the technology’s rollout?
A
- Bringing key stakeholders like mobile operators onboard will be the biggest challenge in launching D2M technology on a wide scale.
- A mass roll out of the technology will entail changes in infrastructure and some regulatory changes.
