The EU’s top telecommunications official has set a deadline for a unified mobile TV standard. At the mobile hardware convention CeBit last Friday, Viviane Reding warned the competing mobile broadcast standards that if they don’t get behind one the EU will choose for them. Reding wants to make government mandate a last resort but says they’re prepared to choose if the industry at large has not done so by this summer. There is no doubt which standard the Commissioner for Information Society and Media would pick – DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld).

DVB-H technology is maintained by the DVB Project, a consortium with over 300 members. DVB-H represents the largest suite of internationally accepted standards for digital television for mobile equipment. If the EU adopts this standard it will go a long way in making DVB-H the most used system in the world. The EU can do for DVB-H what it’s done for GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) now considered the standard worldwide for mobile digital networks.

But DVB-H is not liable to have the mantle of heir apparent just handed to it. Fierce competition comes from two sources. DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) has been widely adopted across Germany. In the UK a new system called MediaFlo is making waves. Andrew Gilbert of British Sky Broadcasting says that MediaFlo is technically superior to DVB-H. MediaFlo has twice the potential coverage of geographical area per transmitter. It also has quicker channel switching and has a capacity for twice the number of channels as DVB-H.