The European Union urged its member countries to adopt Nokia's DVB-H mobile TV standard as the nascent technology struggles to lift off. The standard, adopted in earlier iterations last year, competes with Qualcomm's MediaFlo and Korean manufacturers' T-DMB TV technologies.

"For mobile TV to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the technology," said Viviane Reding, European Telecoms Commissioners, in a statement. Supporters of DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld) argue that the market will develop faster with a single-standard approach rather than an open market with multiple competitors.

European firms have long trumpeted the success of the EU's earlier campaign to support the single GSM standard for mobile phones. The GSM standard subsequently took hold in Europe and spread internationally; today that the vast majority of mobile phone service providers utilize the technology. AT&T and T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, use the GSM standard in the U.S.

Italy is the lone European country with a headstart in adopting mobile TV, while other large European nations including Germany and the U.K. have balked in the past at the idea of setting a single standard.

The DVB-H standard is supported by Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Philips Electronics, Sagem, Sony, Samsung, Telefonica, and Vodafone. All are non-U.S. firms with the exception of Motorola, whose management has said it will consider selling the firm's handset unit.

Commissioner Reding has favored DVB-H at least partly because it is based on and partly financial by European interests. "I know that competition among different standards can, for some time, be a good way to let the market identify the best solution," she told an industry conference last year. "But we have been waiting too long. The opportunities are slipping away. It is time to break the deadlock."

In announcing its promotion of DVB-H this week, the EU pointed to research forecasts of a world-wide mobile TV market of $31 billion by 2011.