Open IPTV Forum Trumpets Success of its First Interop Event, Promises More for 2010

The Open IPTV Forum (OIPF)--an industry group that is attempting to bring together telcos, consumer electronics manufacturers, and network infrastructure providers, in order to develop specifications for an open, end-to-end solution that will facilitate development and deployment of interactive, personalized IPTV services (note: the organization, whose founding members include Ericsson, FT Group, Nokia Siemens, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony and Telecom Italia, recently published the Architecture Specification for IPTV infrastructure elements and services to be included in Release 2 of its OIPF Specifications--see the article published on itvt.com, September 8th--and also recently published the Profiles specification for its Release 1 IPTV Solution--see the article published on itvt.com, October 11th)--is trumpeting the success of its first-ever interoperability event, which took place November 16th-20th at Fraunhofer FOKUS's facility in Berlin, and says that it is planning additional interop events next year and beyond for adopters of its OIPF specifications. It says that the goal of the events is "to stimulate members' product implementations and demonstrate viable IPTV services based on OIPF specifications."

According to the OIPF, companies and organizations participating in the event included Ericsson, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Motorola, Sharp and others; and observers included Allion, Amino, Fastweb, France Telecom Orange, LGE, Pirelli Broadband Solutions, Samsung, Telefonica and Telecom Italia. The emphasis of the event, according to the OIPF, was detailed interoperability testing between consumer terminal equipment and IMS-based IPTV middleware and gateways. The consumer terminal equipment was provided by Motorola and Sharp, and the middleware and gateway platforms were provided by Ericsson and Fraunhofer FOKUS. "This is a major milestone for the Forum to move within two years from specifications to implementations," OIPF president, Yun Chao Hu, said in a prepared statement. "I hope that the enthusiasm of the participants will infect everyone to continue to participate in future events and add to the portfolio of OIPF-based interoperable implementations. With the availability of test specifications scheduled for mid-2010 and a certification program that is in the process of being defined, we expect service providers to feel confident about moving towards OIPF-based deployments." Added Diego Gibellino of Telecom Italia: "From a telecom operator perspective it is quite significant that the Forum has been able to gather companies around early implementations just after the completion of the OIPF Release 1 specifications. The availability of equipment and devices and their capability to interoperate in a multi-vendor environment are the fundamental value that the specifications can bring to the market."