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.

The announcement, while acknowledging that standards work is ongoing in many different places, including ITU, is a reaction to an industry call for ITU to push forward and coordinate global standardization effort in the field.

IPTV is a system where a digital television service is delivered to consumers using internet protocol over a broadband connection. It will help pave the way for players, many of whom are already moving to IP-based NGN infrastructure, to offer a triple-play of video, voice and data.

Standards are necessary in order to give service providers, whether traditional broadcasters, ISPs or telecommunication service providers, control over their platforms and their offerings. Standards here will encourage innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee quality of service (QoS), ensure interoperability and ultimately help players remain competitive.

The mission of IPTV FG is to coordinate and promote the development of global IPTV standards taking into account the existing work of the ITU study groups as well as other standards development organizations (SDOs), forums and consortiums. In particular, the IPTV FG will:

1. Define IPTV
Identify scenarios, drivers and relationships with other services and networks

Identify requirements and define framework architecture

2. Review and gap analysis of existing standards and ongoing works
Identify opportunities for ITU

Identify activities that ITU would encourage other organizations to pursue

3. Coordinate existing standardization activities
4. Harmonize the development of new standards
5. Encourage interoperability with existing systems where possible

The Focus Group will build upon existing work. Its scope will include architecture, requirements, quality of service, security, network and control aspects, end-system aspects, as well as interoperability, middleware and application platforms.