The Open IPTV Forum is pleased to announce that its first Interoperability Event was successful. The event took place from Nov 16th - 20th in the premises of the event host, Fraunhofer FOKUS in Berlin, Germany. The Open IPTV Forum plans for additional Interoperability Events during 2010 and onwards for adopters of the OIPF specifications.

Speaking after the event Mr Oliver Friedrich, Fraunhofer FOKUS said: “It’s a pleasure for us to facilitate the first ever Open IPTV Forum Interoperability Event and take part in the actual event as an independent research institute. We believe that this event truly brings OIPF members and supporters one step closer to providing implementations of the OIPF specifications. We will actively support this process by offering help to participating companies and by providing prototypes and reference implementations.”

The OIPF Interoperability Event was participated by the OIPF Members including: Ericsson, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Motorola, Sharp and others.

The emphasis of OIPF’s first Interoperability Event was detailed interoperability testing between consumer terminal equipment and IMS-based IPTV middleware and gateway. It is through these Interoperability Events that the Open IPTV Forum expects to stimulate member’s product implementations and demonstrate viable IPTV services based on OIPF specifications. The consumer terminal equipment was provided by Motorola, and Sharp , whilst the middleware and gateway platforms came from Ericsson and Fraunhofer FOKUS.

Members of the Open IPTV Forum in attendance to observe the proceedings, include Allion, Amino, Fastweb, France Telecom Orange, LGE, Pirelli Broadband Solutions, Samsung, Telefonica and Telecom Italia.

According to Mr. Diego Gibellino, 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 equipments and devices and their capability to interoperate in a multi-vendor environment are the fundamental value that the specifications can bring to the market”. According to Ms Priya Rajagopal, Motorola 'The event provided Motorola with a good opportunity to do interoperability testing between our set-top boxes and IPTV solutions from different service providers'.

According to Mr Bo Olofzon, Ericsson “It is great to see the industry coming together to prove the feasibility of OIPF specifications. The good results only strengthen us in our commitment for open standards based IPTV. We are looking forward to work with service providers, CE vendors, and technology providers to get ready for commercial services.”

“This is a major milestone for the Forum to move within 2 years from specifications to implementations. 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”, as stated by Yun Chao Hu, OIPF President.