ITU given lead role in IPTV standardisation

Stuart Corner
Monday, 17 April 2006 18:55

Business IT - Technology

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will take the lead in international standardisation for IPTV with the creation of a Focus Group on IPTV.
Formation of the group follows an agreement reached at a public consultation meeting held on 4 and 5 April where around 120 experts from the world's leading ICT companies backed up the ITU's role in the coordination of global IPTV standards.

According to the ITU, the decision was made because of the benefits of worldwide standards for all players in the IPTV value chain and the need to achieve rapid progress to avoid market fragmentation.

"The announcement, while acknowledging that standards work is ongoing in many different places, including ITU, is a reaction to an industry call for ITU to push forward and coordinate global standardisation effort in the field," the ITU said in a statement.

The mission of the focus group will be "to coordinate and promote the development of global IPTV standards taking into account the existing work of the ITU study groups as well as other standards development organisations (SDOs), forums and consortiums."

 In particular, the IPTV FG will: identify scenarios, drivers and relationships with other services and networks; identify requirements and define framework architecture; review and undertake a "gap analysis" of existing standards and ongoing works; identify opportunities for ITU; identify activities that ITU would encourage other organisations to pursue; coordinate existing standardization activities; harmonize the development of new standards; encourage interoperability with existing systems where possible.

The Focus Group will build upon existing work. Its scope will include architecture, requirements, quality of service, security, network and control aspects, end-system aspects, as well as interoperability, middleware and application platforms.

The first meeting of this group will be held in early June 2006. More information including inputs to the April 4-5 meeting meeting as well as a webcast can be found here.