An IPTV Interoperability Forum has been established to support the implementation of systems for internet protocol television, including interactive TV and video-on-demand services.
The IPTV Interoperability Forum has been launched by ATIS, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, an organisation based in the United States that develops and promotes technical and operations standards for the communications and information technology industry.
“IPTV will enable consumers to use television as never before,” said Bill Smith, the chief technology officer of BellSouth and chairman of ATIS. “The ATIS IIF will provide the neutral ground for carriers, service providers, application developers, content providers and equipment manufacturers to work together and make the wide-scale deployment of standardized IPTV a reality.”
“The ATIS IIF will provide the industry with the big picture for IPTV technology standardization,” said Kevin Schneider, chief technology officer of ADTRAN. “ATIS will create an overall reference architecture supporting deployment of IPTV and work with standards groups external to ATIS to establish standards that produce an end-to-end IPTV solution.”
“As IPTV deployments become more prevalent, it is important that key technical and business requirements are met: security, network interoperability, and quality of service, to name a few,” said Bill DeMuth, chief technology officer of SureWest Communications. “Developing industry consensus and standards are key to IPTV’s long-term success.”
Among the objectives of the forum are the creation of a reference architecture for IPTV, including interface definitions, and establishing standard metrics and requirements for content security and the quality of customer experience.
Based in Washington, DC, the ATIS has participants from more than 350 communications companies.