At CeBIT, officials announced that Europe aims to roll out mobile TV services in time for the European football championship in 2008, which will be hosted by Austria and Switzerland. Market studies indicate that mobile television could win 100 million subscribers throughout Europe by 2010. The global market could be worth 11.4 billion euros (15.2 billion dollars) by 2009, according to the EU. Britain, Finland and Italy have already seen brisk growth in their mobile TV markets and Germany is running a pilot project in the western city of Duesseldorf after a test run during last summer"s football World Cup. EU Telecom and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said the European Commission had already invested about 40 million euros in research. Reding noted that competing regions were seizing on the potential as well, with China preparing a mobile TV trial at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Two technologies are currently competing on the market: T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) and DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds), each with different bands and channelling. Reding came out at the CeBIT in favour of DVB-H, which has already been adopted by Italy and Finland and won the support of the French government. She told reporters it was essential to avert a costly rivalry between the two standards: "I am disappointed by the lack of progress made so far. To fully reap the benefits of this market and to export a European model for mobile TV as we did with GSM for mobile phones, industry and member states must work more closely together to devise a common approach."