Qualcomm's UBM chip to suport SVB-H, ISDB-T and its own FLO

UBM chip from Qualcomm to support multiple standards.

Qualcomm has announced a chip that supports world's three leading industry standards. The single chip universal broadcast modem will support Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H), one-segment Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial (ISDB-T) and its own FLO technology. These three are the world's leading mobile broadcast standards.

This chip will act as a platform through which the mobile phone manufacturing companies can meet different standards. Although the new UBM is made as a close companion of Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem (MSM) baseband chipsets, it can be made compatible with other products too.

The UBM allows transmission across the full UHF bandwidth, 470MHz to 862MHz using 5, 6, 7 or 8MHz channels. It will also work with single and multi frequency networks. Though the UBM will support these transmission techniques, it wont support the 3GPP's Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) which will be available both for GSM/EDGE and WCDMA. It is expected that Mobile TV based services based on MBMS would be available by 2008.

The UBM chip is compatible with CDMA2000 and WCDMA/UMTS equipments. The chip will be available for sale by the first quarter of 2007.