Mobile-phone users will be able to watch TV programs on their screens when trial broadcasts begin in mid-2007, a year ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

DMB (digital multimedia broadcasting) technology will be tested next year and a satellite system will be activated in the first half of 2008 so that the Olympic Games can be broadcast to mobile-phone users across the country.

The timetable was unveiled by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) at the third China Digital TV Industry Summit Forum last week.

Residents in Beijing, the host city of the Olympic Games, will be the first group of people to benefit from new technology a chip implanted in their mobile phones.

The country's two biggest mobile telecom operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, are expected to sign agreements with phone makers by the end of the month to buy TV handsets.

Besides mobile phones, big-screen personal digital assistants (PDAs) and MP4 players will also be able to receive TV signals, said Yang Qinghua, director of the television division of the SARFT's broadcast science research institute.

The standard to be adopted is totally indigenous and the country does not have to pay any patent fee to other countries, Wang Lian, a senior official with the administration, said earlier this month in an online interview at sina.com. But SARFT has not announced the standard yet so far.

The mobile-phone TV market in China is estimated to reach 6.05 billion yuan (US$756 million) in 2008, Xinhua New Agency reported.

China has 426 million mobile phone users and in the next five years, about 8 per cent of them are expected to subscribe to the mobile TV service, the report said.

Shanghai started a mobile TV service in June and subscribers can watch live TV programs or order their favourite plays and shows on their mobile phones.

In another development, the SARFT will soon announce its own national terrestrial digital TV standard, Xinhua reported.

The new standard will enable a vast group of viewers who do not subscribe to digital cable TV to access digital TV. Since 2003, China has been testing and promoting digital cable TV in more than a dozen cities.

Digital TV which provides superior picture quality and interactive features can be broadcast via satellite, cable or terrestrial television.

By 2015, terrestrial digital television is designed to replace the existing analogue system, through which the majority of viewers in China now watch TV.

(China Daily August 22, 2006)