ITU will take the lead in international standardization for IPTV with the creation of a Focus Group on IPTV (IPTV FG). Today’s announcement follows an agreement reached at a public consultation meeting held on 4 and 5 April where around 120 experts from the world’s leading ICT companies backed up ITU’s role in the coordination of global IPTV standards. The decision was made because of the benefits of worldwide standards for all players in the IPTV value chain and the need to achieve rapid progress to avoid market fragmentation.

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ink Communications, a global communications firm providing integrated public relations, marketing and creative strategies, today announced the addition Optibase Ltd. to its IPTV client base. Optibase joins ink's core IPTV client base which includes ANT Software Limited, BitBand Technologies and Orca Interactive.

Alcatel and Lucent Technologies announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement to create the first truly global communications solutions provider with the broadest wireless, wireline and services portfolio in the industry. The primary driver of the combination is to generate significant growth in revenues and earnings based on the market opportunities for next-generation networks, services and applications, while yielding significant synergies. The combined company's increased scale, scope and global capabilities will enhance its long-term value for shareowners, customers and employees.

i3 micro technology, a leading global provider of IP residential gateways and set-top boxes to operators and service providers, announces that it is changing its name today to Tilgin. The new name derives from the Swedish word “tillgång”, meaning access. Changing the company’s name is a necessary step on the way towards increased international focus as well as preparation for the company’s listing plans on the Stockholm stock exchange later this year.

Alex Cameron has put together a nice little piece of work called IPTV Newswire that aggregates feeds from various sources related to IPTV news and information and displays them on one page. You can check out the site at http://www.iptvnewswire.co.uk. Once you are there, you can customize the feeds available on the front page. The site is currently in beta testing so if you encounter any problems, let Mr. Cameron know.

ECI Telecom announced that Multimedia Research Group (MRG) Inc. has ranked ECI as the top vendor for the number of IPTV Subscribers supported in Europe, based on deployments through year-end 2005. Worldwide, ECI was ranked in second place. ECI's integrated edge to access solution for IPTV services has been deployed with top-tier carriers worldwide. Europe is the largest market today for IPTV deployments.

Six years ago, we were just three restless telecom executives, wanting to start our own business and looking for emerging Internet opportunities," says Alan Robinson, CEO of Shenick Network Systems. "We soon saw that real converged networks of IPTV, VoIP and data all sharing one broadband connection was rapidly becoming a reality, and we responded with diversifEye, a system for assuring the quality and performance of these new services. So far, we've sold diversifEye to more than 50 top companies, including British Telecom, France Telecom, Qwest, Bellsouth, NTT, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and Lucent Technologies.

Swedish IPTV operator FastTV, which delivers IP-TV in the Scandinavian countries, extends its current agreement with Caleo Technologies to deliver Billing and CRM-service also for Norway and Denmark. The solution which is based on Caleo’s own software product, Billiant is FastTV’s main platform for Billing and Customer care. The platform is fully integrated with FastTV’s administrative systems and also includes fully automated service provisioning towards the underlying network.

Connexion by Boeing, a business unit of The Boeing Company, ushered in the new year by announcing evolutions in its pricing and service enhancements for its real-time high-speed Internet and entertainment services to airline passengers in flight.

The service enhancements include an expanded delivery of four channels of live global television to airlines that offer the Connexion by Boeing service, and implementation of Yahoo! as the exclusive search engine on the service's portal used by passengers on flights to access the Internet and email.

Start with a PON and add a splash of STB. Make sure your MPEG-2 or H.264 is garnished with some CA and DRM. The end result may be FiOS or Max but it's all IPTV.

Are you confused? We sure are…

Hello. We'd like to welcome all our viewers to another episode of "TVover.net's Cookin' for the Mass Scale." Today, we are going to show you how to make mouth watering and nutritious IPTV Acronym Soup just like Grandma used to make. This seemingly easy delicacy proves to be quite a difficult task with the various flavors and ingredients out on the market.

Below are the ingredients for IPTV Acronym Soup, just assembled in a different manner. This recipe is always a hit at our house. We rarely have any leftovers!

INGREDIENTS:
-3 teaspoons set-top box (STB)
-1 cup IP video headend
-3 lbs passive optical network (PON)
-1 tablespoon conditional access/digital rights management (CA/DRM)
-1 tablespoon management
-content (MPEG-2 or H.264/MPEG-4)

DIRECTIONS:
For IPTV, combine sweet and tangy set-top box, video headend and PON in a large saucepan. Stir in CA/DRM. Cook, stirring, for several hours until thickened. Remove from heat, stir in management. Carefully roll out the end result. Garnish with content. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

All clear now? Perhaps not…

Let's step back and define exactly what IPTV is.

Do you have IPTV in the U.S.?

We are looking for individuals that have IPTV service or are in an area to receive it from one of the current deployments in the U.S. (Consolidated Communications, Surewest, Pioneer Telephone, or one of the providers in Utah) We are working with an organization to gather some information for an IPTV benchmark study.

Please contact us if you would be willing to participate. We appreciate your support.

Want "a la Carte" programming?

With all the talk lately about "a la Carte" programming we thought it only right to mention that it's already available on the web. Simply click over to our Internet TV stations page and you can find over 290 stations fully searchable by country, language, category, media type, live or video-on-demand, and now search terms.

Which brings us to our next point: yesterday we rolled out what we believe is the first directory of Internet TV stations that you can search via a term or phrase. No longer do you have to page through all the stations listed under a category, country or language to find the exact station you are looking for.

Simply type in "extreme sports" and get extreme sports television. Type in "dutch" or "netherlands" and "music" to obtain Dutch music television. Type in AFTV to return all AFTV stations.

We've included the ability for you to use quoted phrases or include the operators OR and NEAR in your search query. You do not need to include the word AND between search terms because we automatically return only results that include all your search terms.

We hope you enjoy and whether you do or not, please provide us with feedback. And are we missing an Internet TV station? Help us improve the directory by submitting a station or informing us of a broken link.

The HomePNA Alliance announced the addition of SBC Laboratories Inc. ("SBC Labs"), Scientific-Atlanta, Optical Solutions Inc., Analog Devices, Samsung Electronics, Readylinks, Sendtek, and ITOCHU Corporation as new members and the appointment of SBC Labs to the Board of Directors. The addition of SBC Labs, which will represent the SBC companies on the board, builds on HomePNA's strong momentum with telephone companies in deploying the next generation of home networks designed for triple play services. The new members include industry leaders in facilitating the delivery of IP enabled entertainment services.

AFTV Comedy or Comedy Central Overdrive? Music Plus TV or Mania TV? What are the top rated Internet TV stations for any given category?

We'll soon find out.

As we briefly mentioned in our last Internet TV update, we have been working on building a rating system for the stations listed in our directory. After much toil, tears, and sweat, we are very excited to announce the system is now live.

We used the simple 5-star approach for the basis of our rating system. The 5 stars to the right of the channel are the overall rating. Users click "Rate This!" to provide a channel rating.