Comreg said it was "technology agnostic" and has an open mind as to how mobile operators and handset makers choose to implement the technology necessary for mobile phones to receive television broadcasts.

"The market will decide a standard, " said Hugh Tuckey of Comreg's broadcasting section. "We're not going to back a winner now at this stage."

Media analysts at Screen Digest predict mobile TV will deliver 4.7bn of revenue across Europe by 2011 if technology platforms are standardised.

The Irish regulator has not decided how much mobile TV licences will cost yet, but industry experts estimated 17m was not beyond the realms of possibility.

Officials in the regulator's broadcasting section said their expectation was that one mobile TV "multiplex" licence would be offered to potential bidders. The winner of the licence could then rent out slots of radio spectrum to content providers who wished to broadcast a signal for mobile phones.

"There needs to be consultation with the industry and the regulator on this subject and I would be surprised if there is only one licence, " said Tommy McCabe, head of the Irish Cellular Industry Association.

"We believe the licensing process for any commercial broadcast mobile TV service should be based on a wholesale model, whereby access would be offered to all mobile operators who can then decide whether they wish to offer a retail service to their customers, " said a spokeswoman for O2 which is running trials of mobile TV on the DVB-h standard.

"Spectrum is a finite resource and should be used efficiently; therefore it is likely that only one multiplex (block of spectrum) would be allocated for broadcast mobile TV. Splitting the capacity available from a single multiplex across different operators could devalue the customer proposition, ie quality and variety of content. Therefore we believe a wholesale model represents the best way forward for the roll-out of a commercial mobile TV service in Ireland."

Video downloads are now available on 3G networks in Ireland, whereas true mobile TV represents convergence between mobile and broadcasting services. O2 is the only operator in Ireland to be testing the DVB-H standard for mobile TV at the moment. The Digital Video Broadcast (Handheld) standard is one of several industry platforms for mobile TV, although it seems the likeliest choice in Ireland at this stage.

MediaFlow is an alternative used in the US, Digital Multi Broadcast (DMB) is use in South Korea, while Virgin recently began trials of DAB-IP for mobile phones in Britain.

Mobile operators 3 and Vodafone both stream TV services over their 3G networks in Ireland. Vodafone offers 18 channels anchored by Sky News, and 3 has downloads from RTE and TV3.

Meteor said it had considered a mobile TV trial based on the DVB-H standard, but has not decided to confirm whether it will participate in a trial.

The dark horse in all this speculation is Digiweb which was awarded the 088 mobile phone number by Comreg in April. The company has plans to launch a national mobile broadband services this year, and a mobile phone service in early 2008.