Socio-technical challenges in the development of digital multimedia broadcasting: A survey of Korean mobile television development

Abstract

This paper examines the prospectus of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting from the technical, economic and regulatory issues. This paper attempts to gain a better understanding of how DMB will evolve and stabilize in next generation network environments. Two research questions guide this study: (1) How does DMB trigger a change in policy, market and industry structure? (2) What are the driving forces of the rapid DMB development in Korea? As these questions involve socio-technical issues, this study uses a socio-technical perspective to investigate the complex relations between the social and technical aspects of DMB by highlighting the co-evolving nature, diversity, and interface between different driving forces and policy. The finding is that Korean DMB is the outcome of a proactive strategy of a telecom carrier and the Korean government's industrial policy to support such strategy. Among the push-oriented trajectory, however, non-technical issues such as users, market and regulation are left behind, which reveals the disjunction of the DMB development in terms of the socio-technical system perspective. The development of DMB sheds light on the growing challenges in the dynamics of industry, regulation, and technology.