As Asia leads the world in broadband penetration and innovative services, the IEC takes the Broadband World Forum Asia 2006 to Hong Kong this 15-18 May and hosts ICT executives from around the world to discuss the latest leading-edge developments.

IMS Conferences has published the final list of speakers for its upcoming IP Trends European Summit in Monaco. The 50 senior executives that will speak represent Europe’s leading telcos and operators including: France Telecom, TeliaSonera, BT and FastWeb; industry consultants and financiers including Accenture, Capgemini, DKW and McKinsey; as well as the leaders in IPTV technology including Microsoft, Amino, Motorola, Lucent, Siemens and Alcatel.

Networks, Inc. today announced it will host a conference call webcast to discuss "IPTV and Beyond" on May 8, 2006 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Parks Associates today announced support of Digital Living 2006: Trends in Digital Home and Lifestyle, a one-day executive conference held June 22 at the Singapore Expo in conjunction with CommunicAsia, Enterprise IT, and BroadcastAsia.

At National Association of Broadcasters Convention, the world's largest electronic media show, Thomson, showcased a comprehensive set of digital application offerings including products and solutions supporting multi-format and multi- distribution operations. Innovations in products and technologies as well as major customer orders announced this week strengthen Thomson's leading position as a technology leader in products and systems for broadcast, networking, professional AV and film production.

Orb Networks, the pioneering developer of software for instant access to content everywhere, announced today that Jim Behrens, the company's CEO, will speak on the "Future of TV" panel discussion at OnHollywood 2006, the digital media and entertainment market for executives, being held May 2-4 at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, CA. Orb Networks, which received a 2006 OnHollywood Top 100 Private Company Innovator award, will also participate in the Top Innovator Demo program at the conference.

Greg Demetriades, CEO of WhiteBlox, and Serge Stein, CTO of WhiteBlox, will speak at NAB2006 Tuesday, April 25. The duo will make a presentation entitled "New Tools, New Rules: Making Money Through Integrated Advertising," in conference rooms S108 and S109 at 10 a.m.

The brand new developer lab called "IPTVBox" is a one-stop shop for developing and testing interactive applications for IPTV.

Based on the powerful Sun Ultra 20 Workstation, with its next generation 64 bit AMD Opteron processor, the iTVBox uses the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment combined with DigiSoft's Software Development Kit to create Java interactive applications to run on a variety of IPTV Set Top Boxes and Middlewares.

TANDBERG Television announced it will showcase a new on-demand interactive advertising system at NAB2006, booth #SU1164. The dynamic ad placement solution integrates advanced video on-demand (VOD) capabilities with interactive television functionality to deliver compelling advertising experiences tightly embedded in broadcast and VOD programming. Open and standards-based, the TANDBERG Television on-demand interactive advertising solution empowers advertisers to launch and manage advertising campaigns across all delivery platforms and viewing devices. Furthermore, the technology also enables advertisements to be matched according to programming type, geography and demographic data, so the advertisements are strategically targeted to viewers.

The National Association Broadcasters (NAB) and iHollywood Forum, Inc. have announced the final slate of sessions, speakers and sponsors who will participate in the inaugural IPTV World event The summit takes place Wednesday, April 26, 2006 during NAB2006 at the Las Vegas Convention Center as part of the official NAB program.

WhiteBlox, the industry's leading broadcast network solutions provider, has finalized the network and links to broadcast exclusive online content for The NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 22-26, 2006. WhiteBlox will be airing content from the show LIVE over the Internet, free to the public, via its proprietary private-network building technology. The events can be accessed via the official NAB site: http://www.nabshow.com/ or at the WhiteBlox website: http://www.whiteblox.com/pressRelations/pressRelations_b.html.

iSEEradio is set to rock the house with a special in-studio performance from Blue October for The Buzz 94.5 FM on Thursday, April 20th at 12 p.m. Blue October will give a live concert highlighting the launch of their new album, Foiled.

Blue October is a Texas indie rock band, originating in Houston. Singles from their new album are already swiftly climbing the Billboard music charts. The show will take place in The Smirnoff Ice Studio in Houston, a venue designed by Clear Channel especially for private performances. The Rod Ryan Show, which airs weekdays on The Buzz from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., held contests to give away in-studio seats to the show, and will also air the show live on the Internet.

More than 16,000 high school and college science classrooms across the United States will simultaneously see and chat with nine leading scientific and religious experts on the topic of global warming through the Earth Day Network using the new "PowerTV" internet- protocol television (IPTV) network of Chantilly-based Communication Technologies, Inc. (COMTek). The massive, interactive undertaking is believed to be single biggest simultaneous application of two-way IPTV technology ever attempted.

The National Association Broadcasters (NAB) and iHollywood Forum, Inc. have announced the final slate of sessions, speakers and sponsors who will participate in the inaugural IPTV World event The summit takes place Wednesday, April 26, 2006 during NAB2006 at the Las Vegas Convention Center as part of the official NAB program.

NAB2006 will take place April 22-27, 2006 in Las Vegas (exhibits open April 24), and is the world's largest electronic media show covering the development, delivery and management of professional video and audio content across all mediums. Complete NAB2006 details are available at www.nabshow.com.

Advanced rates for IPTV World registration are available through April 19 with two types of available tickets. Basic tickets are available for $250 and Deluxe tickets are available for $325 through April 19. Deluxe tickets include the full day program, networking lunch and mixer, attendee list with attendee name, job title and company, and partner research brief notebooks. Onsite registration rates are slightly higher.

Registration information can be found at: http://www.ihollywoodforum.com/iptvworldApril2006-registration.htm

Optibase, Ltd., a leading provider of advanced digital video solutions, today announced that it will demonstrate live encoding of MPEG-4 AVC High Definition (HD) resolution technology at the National Association of Broadcasters show (NAB), April 24-27, 2006 in Las Vegas.