Alcatel-Lucent and Speedcast have teamed up to jointly create a DVB-H platform for mobile TV operators in Asia. The two have said they’ll use their technologies, infrastructure and content delivery products to build the service, which they’ll market to operators in the region.

The pair’s service will cover: the service platform, a security and encryption technology, the platform for encoding into a DVB-H compatible format, the satellite delivery to terrestrial infrastructure and the TV channels themselves.

There’s a lot of advantages in going for a hosted option – it takes a lot of the upfront costs out of the equation and means that you can test out the service without committing a load of cash. That said, it doesn’t leave much room for differentiating services across different operators, but at least it’s a relatively safe way of testing out DVB-H while the business models – not to mention the demand – for mobile TV are being sounded out.