The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) announced the creation of an industry exploratory group that will assess the technical and operational opportunities and challenges surrounding deployment of IPTV.

IPTV technology is gaining tremendous industry momentum and aggressive deployment among U.S. service providers. However, open industry standards supporting end-to-end implementation and deployment of IPTV are seriously needed to deliver the functionality and carrier-grade quality that industry requires, as well as the service reliability that users demand.

“The effective, robust and interoperable deployment of IPTV technology is vital to service providers,” said Balan Nair, chief technology officer of Qwest. “The ATIS IPTV Exploratory Group is tasked to create a consistent industry definition for IPTV and identify technical and operational issues surrounding the implementation of IPTV -- quality of service, interoperability, inter-carrier billing, and the like.”



The group’s work also will identify stakeholders and current IPTV work programs, Nair said, and, if necessary, propose next steps for ATIS to initiate to develop necessary standards for the deployment of IPTV.

Nair serves as the Chair of the ATIS Technology and Operations Council, which established the exploratory group. Since June 2004, the ATIS TOPS Council has released five work plans that assess the technology needs and create an industry roadmap for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Network Security, Data Interchange, Mobile Wireless Services and Wide Area Ethernet. Also in 2004, the TOPS Council developed and released a Next Generation Network (NGN) Framework, outlining the requirements for NGN deployment. The NGN document is a basis for on-going collaboration with international standards bodies.