ASP projects

B²M: The broadcasting revolution: social impacts and opportunities

Almost everyone watches television, nowadays. And we all have a mobile phone in our pockets! Could you imagine, then, an unsuccessful future for TV over a mobile phone? Before launching of the service, just few years ago, not even the most visionary individuals would have imagined such large problems in penetrating the market. But the first standard used to deliver such a service, UMTS, has not been up to expectations. Now DVB-h, a specifcally created broadcasting standard to deliver high quality TV over mobiles, is being developed. Will it turn again into a big flop? Or will it be able to meet user expectations?
The work provides an answer to the questions above, provided that all the involved players in the value chain of the segment jointly cooperate. The project has been carried on in collaboration with Motorola, the External reference institution and sponsor, and with Politecnico di Torino and Politecnico di Milano (Polytechnic institutes of Turin and Milan, respectively). The main stakeholders of the work are the manufacturers of mobile phones (in our case Motorola), DVB-h service providers (Tim, Vodafone, …) and the end users, who can derive great benefits from DVB-h future success in terms of improved user-experience. Research activity in the DVB-h market has made it possible to highlight the low quality of current offers in terms of mobile terminals, services other than mobile TV and adequate business models. DVB-h enabled phones present on the market are in fact majorly of minor brands: this is a initial significant problem in a sector where brands plays a major role in the purchase of a new phone. Mobile TV offers are not even close to users expectations and no additional services are present. Finally, since DVB-h is not perceived as a real breakthrough service, users are not willing to pay for it: all these factors finally result large-scale adoption and distribution problems. Given the above assumptions, the solution to the adoption issue has been created by combining the technical and managerial backgrounds of the members of the group. Firstly, the team has designed and modeled an innovative mobile phone that should meet users’ needs, enriching it with some very original features. Secondly, two original personalized service have been modeled, InfoMobility and InfoUniversity, so to enrich actual offer. Subsequently, a free-to air business model for generalist mobile TV has been proposed, providing a detailed and sustainable timetable for its introduction, and formalizing a less rigid structure for the value chain of the segment. Finally, the team has estimated adoption curves for DVB-h and demand curves for mobile TV: both the topics are still not present in literature, providing an innovative sight to this section. To conclude, the team proposes an innovation curve, presenting the schedule of introduction of all the factors presented in the work that enables real adoption curves to meet our estimates. The presented solution has been built above solid foundations: apart from the deep base-research, the team has had many interviews with Tim (Telecom Italia Mobile), in quality of DVB-h service provider, and with Istituto Mario Boella, a research institute which is developing DVB-h services. In addition, a statistical survey aimed to poll user opinions has been conducted among the Politecnico’s students. Finally, for the whole duration of the work, both Motorola and Politecnico di Torino practically supported the team in reaching the solution by making available all their know-how.

Principal Academic Tutors
Emilio Paolucci
Production Systems and Business Economics, Politecnico di Torino

Academic Tutors
Giovanni Baule
Industrial Design, Arts, Commuincation and fashion, Politecnico di Milano
Paolo Neirotti
Production Systems and Business Economics, Politecnico di Torino
Nicoletta Rangone
Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
Donatella Sciuto
Electronics and Information, Politecnico di Milano
Stefano Tubaro
Electronics and Information, Politecnico di Milano

External institution
Motorola Italia

External Tutors
Raffaele Menolascino
Motorola Italia

Team members
TEAM A
Riccardo Ocleppo [Project Communication Coordinator, Team controller], Electronic Engineering
Sergio Doriguzzi Bozzo, Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Davide Spinnato, Telecommunication Engineering
Stefano Tomasino, Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering

Download the poster of the Project