ATIS announced the formation of the IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF) to develop ATIS standards and related technical and operations activities that enable the interoperability, interconnection and implementation of IPTV systems and services, including video on demand and interactive TV services.

"IPTV will enable consumers to use television as never before," said Bill Smith, CTO of BellSouth and chairman of ATIS. "Video on demand and interactive services are among the exciting 'killer apps' that IPTV will make possible. 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 Board of Directors launched the IIF at its quarterly meeting Thursday on the recommendation of the ATIS IPTV Exploratory Group (IEG), which was formed in April to examine the technical issues surrounding the successful wide-scale deployment of IPTV.

"The ATIS IIF will provide the industry with the big picture for IPTV technology standardization," said Kevin Schneider, CTO of ADTRAN and co-chair of the IEG. "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, vice president and CTO of SureWest Communications and co-chair of the IEG. "Developing industry consensus and standards is key to IPTV's long-term success."

The scope of the IIF includes: coordination of standards activities for IPTV technologies, including acting as a liaison with outside groups; development of interoperability agreements, technical reports and ATIS standards; and providing the venue for interoperability activities and the assessment of IPTV issues in the context of next-generation networks (NGN).

Initial objectives of the IIF will include: the creation of an industry overall reference architecture for IPTV; content security; interoperability standards and testing requirements for components; restoration after outages; QoS; path establishment; reliability and robustness of service components; the establishment of user expectations; and more.