Levira, a broadcast infrastructure company jointly owned by the Estonian government and French company TDF, has partnered with telco operator EMT to launch a pilot DVB-H mobile TV service in Estonia.
According to the DVB Project, the trial was expected to begin this month in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city, and will run throughout the year. Levira, TDF and EMT are testing the DVB-H service in anticipation of a commercial launch. Currently, legislation in the country prevents the launch of such a network, but the companies hope new legislation allowing the service will be put into place in 2009.
For the pilot, the companies are broadcasting seven TV services, all of which are free-to-air but require network ID-based access for EMT customers. The channels being broadcast include ETV, Kanal 2, Kanal 11, MTV Eesti, Seitse, Eurosport and Euronews. Star, Eurosport 2, National Geographic and Jetix are expected to be added as well.
The companies are using transmission equipment from Sagem and NEC for the UHF broadcasts, transmitted over the 506MHz frequency. Headend equipment includes encoding from Elecard, an Electronic Service Guide (ESG) from Icareus and UDcast’s IP Encapsulator. The signals are being sent to Nokia N77 receiving devices.