Long Days Loom This Week for Work on Standardized IPTV Architecture
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Cal. -- A group working on architecture matters for an international standard on IPTV has a long week’s work ahead of it, speakers said here Mon. at the opening of a week long meeting of the IPTV focus group of the ITU’s telecommunications standardization sector (ITU-T). The Alliance for Telecom Industry Standards was ready to help fill the breach with documents supporting standards based on Next Generation Network (NGN) architecture and, in a compromise, supporting data from both the Web and IP Multimedia System (IMS) networks, said Dan O'Callaghan of Verizon, chmn. of ATIS’s IPTV Interoperability Forum.
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ATIS, which reflects the views of N. American carriers and vendors, is hosting the meeting, and O'Callaghan and ATIS Pres. Susan Miller had featured speaking slots in the opening plenary session. It came ahead of 4 days of working group meetings and a closing plenary late Fri. that aims to approve documents in 6 areas after discussion of contributions received since a 4-day electronic meeting in Dec. Eventually, the focus group will make recommendations to ITU- T Study Group 13 as the basis for it to adopt standards after further discussion.
Koleyni said he plans to report to the study group’s April meeting on the focus group’s work. He may ask for a 6- month extension of its life, to year-end, depending on progress, he said.
Many comments have been received on the focus group’s architecture document, and the working group dealing with it has much work to do this week, said focus group Chmn. Ghassem Koleyni of Nortel. Rooms at the Microsoft conference center where the meeting is being held have been reserved until 10 p.m. daily, he said pointedly. The working group on requirements and architecture must “expedite” its work so the other groups can “accelerate” theirs, he said.
“The central part of the work” at ATIS on IPTV has been that of its architecture task force under AT&T’s Steven Wright and Alcatel-Lucent’s Randy Sharpe, O'Callaghan said. Its efforts are “fundamental” to those of the other task forces, on DRM metrics, service quality metrics, metadata, and interoperability and testing, he said. The architecture group developed a requirements road map that’s “really what defines IPTV,” O'Callaghan said.
The framework is an “evolvingly sophisticated IPTV network” that from the start offers a “service most consumers would accept as a replacement” for previous forms of TV, O'Callaghan said. “We decided we had to eat the elephant one forkful at a time.”
Stage one is seen as broadcast TV, streaming channels down to viewers in what may sound like just “replacement of the antenna,” O'Callaghan said. But there are serious challenges, including handling packet loss and attaching consumer devices to the service provider’s network, he said. Packet loss is the “biggest roadblock” to providing IPTV service, a problem that doesn’t face cable or satellite, O'Callaghan said. Losing “one single packet” means “decimating 10,000 bits of information,” he said. ATIS is working with DVB technologists on error correction methods, O'Callaghan said.
Stage 2 is “low-level interactivity” of the kind that’s already becoming familiar, such as video on demand and pay per view. The 3rd stage is “a lot of the fun stuff,” such as mobility and streaming video up from viewers -- what’s considered the “buzz factor” for “real IPTV.”
ATIS’s architecture group is working on a specification for multicast network service, O'Callaghan said. The industry has “just overengineered” for multicasting rather than taking the question on well, he said. In the coming converged network, though, “multicast resources must be managed.” Another focus is remote management of consumer devices. Consumers “need someone to hold them by the hand” in running home entertainment, O'Callaghan said. ATIS also is working with CEA, considering which formats are acceptable in work toward a media protocols specification, he said. Specifications for the Emergency Alert System will be unique to the U.S. and required by federal rules.
On DRM, ATIS seeks “robust” technology free of intellectual property licensing, O'Callaghan said. Service providers can come up with their own initial access and security systems, but it’s important to provide a default, and ATIS’s focus is an IPTV scrambling algorithm, he said.
The task forces on metadata and on interoperability and testing are the newest, having started in Oct., O'Callaghan said. The interoperability will keep an eye out for emerging problems in the work of the other groups, he said.
In Q&A, Andrea Saks, representing Telecom for the Deaf and other advocates for disabled people, pressed O'Callaghan and others to make accessibility of service a declared goal. O'Callaghan said the metadata task forces is dealing with enabling functions such as closed captioning, multilanguage descriptor channels and parental guidance. Saks promoted the express use of the term “accessibility” as a flag for the benefit of those who aren’t technically sophisticated, and O'Callaghan said he would take the message back to his interoperability forum colleagues.
IPTV is central to “the strategies of many service providers operating in an increasingly competitive environment,” said ATIS’s Miller. She said it’s especially central to the ability of N. American carriers to offer consumer service bundles. IPTV will transform business models and radically change advertising, content provisioning and network programming, Miller said. “Your work is providing the underpinnings for a fundamental global shift.”
Focus group Chmn. Koleyni praised ATIS for a “very, very good level of cooperation.” He said ATIS’s permission for the focus group to use its documents had prompted other organizations to offer the same.