the connected world supplement special report Supplement sponsored by
Over the previous five years, Open IPTV Forum founders Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Orange-FT Group, Panasonic, TP Vision (formerly Philips), Samsung, Sony Corporation and Telecom Italia have worked with over 50 other key players in the IPTV value chain to deliver two releases of specifications for interoperable end-end IPTV services of the future. The OIPF is now intensely focused on taking its free-to-use, standards-based specifications to market. Darren Vogel, marketing director of the OIPF, provides an update on industry support and work with the Forum since the last IBC, and a reminder of why so many industry leading businesses are investing significant time and effort to deliver a certification regime and the first real-world deployments of IPTV solutions to OIPF specifications.
OIPF: accelerating a global mass market for IPTV
I
nitially the OIPF worked on ‘defining and publishing free-of- charge, standards-based specifications for end-to-end IPTV services of the future’. This was the first and fundamental step to
enable and accelerate the creation of a mass market for IPTV - successfully meeting the concerns expressed by service providers finding limitations in the use of proprietary solutions. Continuing with its overall aim of
stimulating a mass market for IPTV, the Forum imminently rolls out a long awaited, but carefully considered, OIPF Certification Programme. This finally moves the industry towards being able to realistically achieve the goal of interoperability between devices. Certification is a clear example of the change of emphasis for the Forum over the past year, the OIPF’s role now being visibly beyond defining specifications. End-to-end specifications are essential to the creation of an
Darren Vogel and Dr Nilo Mitra chair the OIPF round table, hosted by Rogers
Communications in Montreal June 2012.
effective ecosystem which can deliver a ‘plug and play’ experience for the consumer. This in turn will ensure successful commercial deployments for both device manufacturers and service providers. From the outset, the OIPF has emphasised the need for a retail market - a horizontal market - for consumer equipment conforming to its specifications. Once this has been achieved and, assuming that service providers also choose to offer services conforming to the OIPF solution, then users will be able to make their own choices. As OIPF board member for Sony Corporation, Paul Szucs, said: “The ultimate goal is that consumers can go out to a retail store and purchase their own preferred device to receive whatever IPTV and online media services are available to them, whether it be a TV, PVR, games console - any device that has the functionality integrated. The key is freedom of choice.” With the development of a certification
S26 l ibe l the connected world supplement september/october 2012 l
www.ibeweb.com
programme, this vision should soon be realised, and the whole IPTV market can roll out faster and more effectively.
Specifications, not standards
The OIPF still emphasises that it is not, as many people first assume, a standards body - it creates coherent, end-to-end interoperable solutions, organised into three distinct profiles. It does this by tying together various standardised components, defined by different standardisation bodies and industry consortia, and filling the gaps between them. The intention of the OIPF has always been to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’. Thus, OIPF specifications contain many references to standards published by DVB, MPEG, 3GPP, ETSI and many others. To this end, the Forum has close ties with various industry organisations. At the same time, the OIPF has
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