Viaccess, the conditional access business of France Telecom, and digital music service provider Musiwave have launched the first actual content service to use DRM based on the OMA DRM 2.0 standard. Viaccess is providing the server and client (handset) OMA DRM 2.0 software implementations.
The service is over France Telecom's wireless carrier Orange, is live in Switzerland now, and is expected to launch in other countries including France, Belgium, Poland, UK, and Spain. Content includes downloads of music from three of the four majors (all except Universal Music, which is still in the discussion stage) and several independent labels -- all content that Musiwave already hosts for other services.
Currently supported handsets include the Nokia 6630 and 6680, with support for Nokia N series phones to come. Viaccess's OMA DRM 2.0 software is downloaded into the client devices, which only support OMA DRM 1.0 out of the box. Viaccess is following the same path from conditional access to mobile DRM that NDS blazed almost a year ago.
It's a bit late for the 2005 holiday shopping season, but this is the first real evidence of OMA DRM 2.0 adoption, after months and months of momentum-jeopardizing delays. OMA DRM 2.0 is a vastly more powerful and flexible DRM specification than the 1.0 version that is now implemented in several wireless content services, mostly in Europe. Musiwave's support of OMA DRM 2.0 represents a departure from its existing relationship with SDC, the proprietary DRM supplier from Switzerland.
Yet while this is going on, chances for the OMA standards to take hold across the Atlantic are diminishing. Groove Mobile, a wireless content distributor with proprietary DRM, announced on Monday that it is launching a wireless music service in Canada with Bell Canada next month. This would both expand Groove Mobile's North American presence beyond its initial partnership with Sprint and compete in Canada with Melodeo's service over Rogers Wireless.
Open standards are vitally important to the growth of the mobile content industry, because of the consumer flexibility and interoperability they provide. OMA DRM 1.0 was necessary to get the process started with the less powerful devices of a couple of years ago and a music industry that was not yet confident about over-the-air music delivery. But it is not powerful enough to support the variety of business models that will flourish in the wireless space, while OMA DRM 2.0 definitely is.
Europe may now, finally, be on its way to broader support of OMA DRM 2.0; this announcement from Musiwave and Viaccess is a real milestone. But if the open standard is confined to Europe, then the growth of the mobile content industry will be similarly confined.
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