Felipe Galindo

BERLIN: In 1989, 13 countries in Europe agreed to use the same technology for the first digital mobile phone networks. The pact averted costly competition among standards and propelled GSM to global dominance, with the standard now powering 2.3 billion, or 81 percent, of handsets worldwide.

So far, the European Commission has failed to achieve the same end with the technology for sending video directly to cellphone handsets. On Wednesday, the commission is expected to take action to put pressure on industry to come up with a single standard that all 27 countries in the European Union would use.

If mobile video is successful - and that's still a big if, experts say - the technology could open vast new markets for equipment makers, help cellphone operators finally justify expensive third-generation networks and let broadcasters reconnect with on-the-go viewers who no longer spend hours before conventional televisions.

In Europe alone, the research firm Datamonitor estimates, the number of mobile video viewers, now fewer than 1 million and mostly in Italy and Finland, could rise by 2012 to 43 million. Most are looking for Europe and the United States, where mobile TV is still in its infancy, to replicate the medium's success in Asia.

In Japan, 7.3 million handsets, about 6 percent of cellphone users, can receive free digital broadcasts sent with the mobile video standard called ISDB, developed by the public broadcaster NHK, according to JEITA, an industry association. Mobile TV broadcasts started about a year ago there, as they did in South Korea.

But the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, is having difficulty getting industry to back a single standard.

Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld, or DVB-H, is supported by Vodafone, T-Mobile, O2 and Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Philips and Motorola, but there are a handful of competing standards. The biggest of the rivals is Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, or DMB, developed in South Korea and backed by Samsung, Panasonic, LG Electronics and others.

DMB was originally developed for digital radio broadcasts and DVB-H is a product of the DVB digital video standard used by terrestrial TV broadcasters, but experts say the technical differences are not apparent to consumers.

After a year of prodding DVB-H and DMB backers to compromise by combining their technology into a single new standard that uses the best of both, Viviane Reding, the EU telecommunications commissioner, threatened to simply choose DVB-H. Reding made the threat after an industry advisory group created by the commission, the European Mobile Broadcasting Council, failed in a year to produce a compromise.

“Members agreed the standard should be an open standard,” said Arthur Weyns, a vice president for global affairs at Philips Consumer Electronics, who is following the debate within the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association, which is based in Brussels and is the main European industry group. “But they couldn't agree what the standard should be.”

So on Wednesday, the commission is expected to ratchet up pressure on industrial competitors. According to a person close to the deliberations, the commission will vote to publish the DVB-H standard in the European Commission's official register. That move would have the effect of strongly encouraging EU member countries to choose DVB-H. Should this not elicit a compromise, Reding and the commission are poised over the next year to pass a directive that would bind countries to use DVB-H.

Michael Kornfeld, one of the researchers who developed DVB-H, said he thought that the markets, not regulators, would decide whether DVB-H or DMB prevailed. Both technologies are being used commercially or being tested in EU countries, and attempts to force a single standard by Brussels would encounter stiff industry opposition, said Kornfeld.

As is often the case, Germany, the EU's largest country, will play a significant role. In Germany, the 13 states, not the federal government, claim to possess the sole legal authority to set which digital video standards are used in their territories. Already there is disagreement, with Bavaria backing DMB, and Berlin, Brandenburg and North Rhine Westphalia backing DVB-H.

If that persists, mobile viewers traveling a few hundred kilometers from Munich to Frankfurt, for example, would have to switch phones or obtain a handset with both standards - which don't exist yet - to continue watching the same TV show. That's a far cry from the useful ubiquity of GSM.

DVB-H competitors, who have invested millions in their technologies, want the commission to take a neutral stance on standards, allowing consumers and markets to decide.