NTL and Granada test DAB/mobile broadcasts

net1

NTL has teamed up with Granada and Capital Radio to trial the delivery of multimedia content over a combination of digital radio (DAB) and mobile networks.

News of the trial comes as the DAB community makes its biggest push yet to woo the mobile industry, with the 3GSM Congress in Cannes this week hosting high-profile activity promoting the benefits of combining DAB and mobile to deliver next-generation mobile content.

In keynote speeches and press conferences the DAB community has hammered home the advantages - low cost, high bandwidth and speed of delivering content - over DAB, using the mobile networks as an interactive back channel. 'Content distribution costs can be up to 10,000 times higher on mobile than DAB, a gap that will never be bridged,' said Annika Nyberg Frankenhaeuser, president of the World DAB Forum. 'DAB can deliver on all the promises of 3G. Why [should DAB and mobile] compete when we can combine forces in an economic way.'

The NTL trial is one of the most high-profile to date in the area of multimedia content using a combination of DAB and mobile. It's working with Microsoft to provide digital rights management for the trial in the Cambridge area.