Telefonica eyes new sales from mobile TV

PARIS (Reuters) - Spain's Telefonica (TEF.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) sees television broadcasts to cellphones as a big opportunity for new sales, a senior official said on Thursday.

"It's very interesting. There is a very big revenue opportunity there," Peter Erskine, head of Telefonica's European operations outside Spain, O2, told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris.

Cellphone makers and mobile operators alike are keen to tap the market, but take-up of such services has been held back by fragmentation of the technologies on offer and high prices of phones.

There are half a dozen competing systems, with many European industry players favoring the home-grown DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld) standard, but competing technologies include DMB and MediaFlo.

"DVB-H looks by far the best one," Erskine said, adding the operators have started to look for opportunities to share building costs for the new broadcasting network.

"There has to be one network for cost and environmental reasons," Erskine said.