[OpenISO] Vision for OpenISO.org beyond MS-OOXML

[Seth Johnson]

(ITU Links and stuff in message pasted below.  -- Seth)

Seth Johnson wrote:
> 
> One thing you might consider is targeting the forays of the ITU into
> standards that undermine the genericity and flexibility of the
> Internet platform.  Perhaps one might consider that standards that
> would counter the separation of layers (particularly the IP layer), be
> at least distinguished from those that would not.  The end result
> would be that there would be a "brand" -- whatever distinguishing term
> is used -- for true end-to-end, flexible connectivity that empowers
> end user innovation (and that inherently provides "network
> neutrality," as this is the actual technical basis for that).


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: What ITU Hath Wrought: IPTV Specs
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:58:19 -0500
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org>


(Here's what the ITU's come up with for IPTV while the busy bees work
away on governance of the Internet . . .  Guess they're in a position
to get running code and adoption, no? :-)  See this quote from the ITU
press release:


   Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication
   Standardization Bureau said, "Standards are crucial for IPTV to
   reach its market potential and global audience. They are necessary
   in order to give service providers — whether traditional
   broadcasters, ISPs, cable operators or telecoms service providers —
   control over their platforms and their offerings. Standards here
   will encourage innovation, help mask the complexity of services,
   guarantee quality of service, ensure interoperability and,
   ultimately, help players remain competitive."

Links for articles below, followed by links to ITU standards documents
and various relevant working groups.  -- Seth)


Announcement Articles:

  ITU announces first global set of standards for IPTV
  http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2007/40.html

  Might Be Time for 'IPTV Labs’:
  http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6390286.html

  Nov. 8: ITU Study Group 9 Approves Standards for IPTV and VoIP
  http://www.cablelabs.com/news/pr/2007/07_pr_itu_110807.html

Also:
> http://telcotv-view.blogspot.com/2007/12/itu-delivers-iptv-standards.html
> http://www.xchangemag.com/hotnews/7ch189146.html
> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6514634.html.html?nid=2734&rid=1347223927


Standards Documents and Working Groups:

  This appears to be a page with the IPTV standards on it from the
  December 18 meeting:
  http://www.itu.int/md/T05-FG.IPTV-071211/sum/en

  ITU's Global Documents Directory:
  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/meetingdocs/index.asp

  (See "IPTV Focus Group" for the IPTV standards, also Study Groups 12
  (QoS) and 13 (Next Generation Networks), and NGN-GSI)

Also see:

  Protocols Outline QoS for NGN:
  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/newslog/Protocols+Outline+QoS+For+NGN.aspx

  ITU Study Group 12 (QoS):
  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com12/index.asp
  http://www.itu.int/md/T05-SG12-080522/sum/en

  IPTV Global Standards Initiative:
  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/gsi/iptv/
  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/IPTV/index.phtml

  NGN Global Standards Initiative:
  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/ngn/
  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/lighthouse/sg13.phtml


Meeting of Study Groups 11, 13 and 19
Seoul, Korea, 14 - 25 January 2008:
> http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/ngn/events/index.asp

---

> http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2007/40.html


ITU announces first global set of standards for IPTV

Specifications will fuel market for next-generation services


Geneva, 18 December 2007 — The International Telecommunication Union
announced the first set of global standards for Internet Protocol TV
(IPTV) today. The standards were built with technical contributions
from leading service providers and manufacturers from the information
and communication technology (ICT) sector and cement ITU’s role as the
global leader in IPTV standards development.

IPTV is one of the most highly visible services to emerge as part of
the development of next-generation networks (NGN). Indeed, it is seen
as both the business case and principal driver for accelerating
deployment of NGN.

The new standards were developed by the Focus Group on IPTV (FG IPTV)
in ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T).

Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization
Bureau said, "Standards are crucial for IPTV to reach its market
potential and global audience. They are necessary in order to give
service providers — whether traditional broadcasters, ISPs, cable
operators or telecoms service providers — control over their platforms
and their offerings. Standards here will encourage innovation, help
mask the complexity of services, guarantee quality of service, ensure
interoperability and, ultimately, help players remain competitive."

This announcement follows the seventh and final meeting of FG IPTV
hosted in Malta by the Maltese Ministry for Competitiveness and
Communications. Censu Galea, Minister for Competitiveness and
Communications said, "The stage of work that sees completion this week
lays the groundwork for an area of ICT that some predict could attract
up to 100 million subscribers in the next three years. It’s easy to
see why so many of the world’s key ICT companies have been keen to
progress this work in ITU. Malta is proud to host this event and play
a part in advancing this important technology."

Contained within the documents produced by the Focus Group are the
high-level architecture and frameworks needed by service providers in
order to rollout IPTV services. ITU’s next phase of IPTV work —
IPTV-GSI (global standards initiative) — will centre on the speedy
preparation of standards based on documents produced by FG IPTV as
well as on the detailed protocols required.

The 2006-2007 period has seen numerous physical and electronic
meetings and workshops progressing work on IPTV around the world.
Twenty-one documents covering IPTV requirements, architecture, quality
of service (QoS), security, digital rights management (DRM), unicast
and multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks will
be submitted to the ITU-T Study Group charged with progressing and
distributing the work. The IPTV-GSI will build on the momentum
generated over the past 20 months, and it is foreseen that
contributions and participation will continue to increase.

Operators consider IPTV a key element of a triple-play package of
voice, video and data services. Standardization is imperative if
service providers are to offer high quality products with
value-additions, such as video-on-demand services that will inevitably
drive the market. A combination of voice, Internet and video services
over a single broadband link and from a single provider is foreseen as
the ultimate goal of the broadband revolution.

FG IPTV benefited from collaboration with all ITU-T Study Groups and
other forums and regional standards bodies, including ATIS IPTV
Interoperability Forum (IIF), DSL Forum, the DVB project, ETSI TISPAN
and the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI).

The first meeting of IPTV-GSI will convene in Seoul, Republic of Korea
from 15 to 22 January 2008.

For further information, please contact:

Sanjay Acharya
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information
ITU
Tel: +41 22 730 6135
Mobile: +41 79 249 4861

Toby Johnson
Communications Officer,
ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau
Tel: +41 22 730 5877
Mobile: +41 79 249 4868

---

> http://telcotv-view.blogspot.com/2007/12/itu-delivers-iptv-standards.html


ITU Delivers IPTV Standards

Tuesday, December 18, 2007


The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced standards
for IPTV. The standards were built with technical contributions from
leading service providers and manufacturers. The new standards were
developed by the Focus Group on IPTV (FG IPTV) in ITU’s
Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T).

These standards are intended to give service providers — broadcasters,
ISPs, cable operators or telecom service providers — control over
their platforms and their offerings. Standards will encourage
innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee quality of
service, ensure interoperability and help players remain competitive.

Contained within the documents produced by the Focus Group are the
high-level architecture and frameworks needed by service providers in
order to rollout IPTV services. ITU’s next phase of IPTV work —
IPTV-GSI (global standards initiative) — will centre on the
preparation of standards based on documents produced by FG IPTV as
well as on the detailed protocols required.

Twenty-one documents covering IPTV requirements, architecture, quality
of service (QoS), security, digital rights management (DRM), unicast
and multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks will
be submitted to the ITU-T Study Group charged with progressing and
distributing the work. The IPTV-GSI will build on the momentum
generated over the past 20 months, and it is foreseen that
contributions and participation will continue to increase.

The first meeting of IPTV-GSI will convene in Seoul, Republic of Korea
from 15 to 22 January 2008.

---

> http://www.xchangemag.com/hotnews/7ch189146.html


ITU Announces First Global IPTV Standards


Bob Wallace

12/18/2007


Hoping to eventually make IP video service deployments less complex,
time-consuming and resource-intensive, the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) today announced the first set of global
standards for IPTV.

The group said the standards were built with technical contributions
from leading service providers and manufacturers from the information
and communication technology sector. The ITU sees IPTV as the
principal driver for next-generation networks.

Telcos have complained loudly that interoperability between devices in
the long infrastructure ecosystems needed to deploy IPTV is sadly
lacking. The new standards were developed by the Focus Group on IPTV
in ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector.

“[Standards] are necessary in order to give service providers —
whether traditional broadcasters, ISPs, cable operators or telecoms
service providers — control over their platforms and their offerings,”
said Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU’s Telecommunications
Standardization Bureau, in prepared comments.

The documents contain the high-level architecture and frameworks
needed by service providers in order to rollout IPTV services. ITU
said its next phase of IPTV work — IPTV-GSI (global standards
initiative) — will center on “the speedy preparation of standards
based on documents produced by FG IPTV as well as on the detailed
protocols required.”

The ITU said 21 documents covering IPTV requirements, architecture,
quality of service (QoS), security, digital rights management, unicast
and multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks will
be submitted to the ITU-T Study Group charged with advancing and
distributing the work.

“We expect to have the requirements and architecture documents out as
a recommended standard by mid-2008,” said Ghassem Koleyni, chairman of
the ITU-T Focus Group in IPTV.

The FG IPTV worked on the project with other ITU study groups as well
as the ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum, the DSL Forum and the Home
Gateway Initiative (HGI), among others.

“Much of the QoS work was taken from the DSL Forum and lots of other
parts were developed by the ATIS IIF and the HGI,” added Kolyeni.

ATIS (www.atis.org)
DSL Forum (www.dslforum.org)
Home Gateway Initiative (www.homegatewayinitiative.org)
International Telecommunications Union (www.itu.int)

---

> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6514634.html.html?nid=2734&rid=1347223927


ITU Scopes Out IPTV Standards

Agency Defines High-Level Framework For Internet Protocol Video


By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 12/20/2007 10:45:00 AM


The International Telecommunication Union this week announced its
first set of standards for Internet Protocol TV, developed with
technical contributions from service providers and equipment
manufacturers.

The standards outline the high-level architecture and frameworks
needed by service providers to roll out IPTV services and "cement
ITU's role as the global leader in IPTV standards development," the
organization said in its Dec. 18 announcement.

"Standards are crucial for IPTV to reach its market potential and
global audience," Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU’s
telecommunication standardization bureau, said in a prepared
statement. "They are necessary in order to give service providers --
whether traditional broadcasters, [Internet service providers], cable
operators or telecoms service providers -- control over their
platforms and their offerings."

The organization’s Focus Group on IPTV developed the documents in
collaboration with other forums and regional standards bodies,
including the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions’ IPTV
Interoperability Forum and the DSL Forum.

ITU said its next phase of IPTV work will focus on developing
standards and protocols based on documents produced by the initial
working group. The agency’s IPTV Global Standards Initiative will
start with 21 documents covering requirements, architecture, quality
of service, security, digital rights management, unicast and
multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks. Its
first meeting is scheduled for Jan. 15 to 22 in Seoul, South Korea.

The ITU, an agency of the United Nations based in Geneva, Switzerland,
establishes worldwide standards for information and communications
technologies.

---

> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6390286.html


Might Be Time for 'IPTV Labs’

Telcos Said to Be Mulling Effort Like CableLabs


By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 11/13/2006


Grapevine, Texas — Dozens of video wares were on brilliant display at
the Telco TV conference here last week. But there wasn’t always a
guarantee that any two products being hawked would work together off
the shelf.

Like the Internet itself, the software and hardware used to deliver
Internet Protocol television services run on a standard underlying
network — otherwise, though, IPTV products don’t have to follow any
particular rules.

"The beauty of IPTV is that it’s based on an open network," said Roy
Kirsopp, vice president and general manager of Amino Communications,
an IPTV set-top box developer in Cambridge, U.K. "But that means,
effectively, that you have to do a custom implementation for each
customer."

Amino’s set-tops have been deployed by 85 providers worldwide. Not one
of them, Kirsopp said, uses the same combination of infrastructure
components.

A NEED FOR ORDER

Now there’s talk that several big telcos are considering forming a
body akin to the cable industry’s CableLabs to direct IPTV
standardization and impose some order on technology suppliers.

AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon Communications and the United Kingdom’s BT
earlier this year formed an ad hoc group to set interface standards
for IPTV devices, according to an executive at a video-processing-gear
company — adding that the effort could, at some point, encompass a
CableLabs-like mission of testing and certifying products.

On another front, AT&T this summer initiated a meeting of service
providers to try to agree on a common format for video-on-demand
metadata, said an executive with a company that provides services to
IPTV operators. "It was the first time we all got into the same room
to talk about these kinds of issues," the executive said.

Ideally, such steps would eliminate the pain involved today in
cobbling together different vendors’ products. But they appear to be
at very early stages. Representatives from AT&T and Verizon
Communications said they haven’t heard of any such telco-led
initiative to create a CableLabs-like organization. Neither has
CableLabs, said Mike Schwartz, the group’s senior vice president of
communications.

To be sure, certain technology standards are emerging by general
consensus among IPTV operators and vendors.

MPEG-4, for example, has gained currency as the next-generation video
format for IPTV (though, as in the cable world, less-efficient MPEG-2
compression is more common today). More broadly, the telecom industry
is driving toward the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) specification,
which is supposed to facilitate communications across multiple network
types and devices.

And there’s at least one industry consortium already attempting to
hash out some technical standards for IPTV.

The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), which
counts AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon among its 350 members, last year
created the IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF), which is charged with
developing "standards and related technical activities that enable the
interoperability, interconnection and implementation of IPTV systems
and services," according to the group’s site.

By the end of the year, the IIF expects to release a framework
document specifying quality-of-service metrics, said Trish St. Michel,
the group’s media relations manager.

But ATIS’s plans don’t yet include interoperability testing, which is
a core part of CableLabs’ charter. St. Michel said that while members
have raised the possibility of creating a certification program, "it
has not yet been determined whether it will take place within the
IIF."

WHOSE AGENDA?

Some industry players see another crucial difference between CableLabs
and ATIS, in that ATIS has invited IPTV technology vendors, as well as
service providers, to participate in the specification-development
process.

"At the end of the day, the service providers need to decide what’s
best for the industry," said Tom Rosenstein, vice president of
business development for gear supplier SeaChange International. He
predicted that a telco-funded certification body for IPTV, if it
materializes, is at least two years off.

Others believe the agendas of AT&T and Verizon, the two telco giants
in the North American market, are too divergent to provide a starting
point for an "IPTV Labs." AT&T is using digital subscriber line to
deliver U-verse TV service, while Verizon’s FiOS TV is based on
fiber-to-the-home technology.

The IPTV landscape is "so fragmented from a vendor and telco
perspective," said Nimrod Ben-Natan, vice president of solutions and
strategy for Harmonic, a maker of video-encoding gear. "I don’t see
the telcos doing their own CableLabs."

For now, vendors are trying to sort through the mix on their own.
Nortel, for one, has positioned itself as an IPTV systems integrator
for telcos, one that can assemble all the components for a video
service and guarantee that they’ll work together. Other equipment
vendors, including fiber-optic networking providers Alcatel and Calix,
have similar interoperability testing programs.

"IPTV technology is very immature," Nortel’s Couch said. "It’s not
like the cable industry, where everything fits together and works."

---

> ITU Study Group 9 Approves Standards for IPTV and VoIP


ITU Study Group 9 Approves Standards for IPTV and VoIP

Press/Media Contact:
Mike Schwartz, CableLabs, 858 Coal Creek Circle, Louisville, CO
80027-9750, 303.661.9100


Louisville, Colorado, November 8, 2007—The main International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) study group for broadband services
approved Internet Protocol and advanced HDTV proposals during meetings
held Oct. 29 – Nov. 2 here at the headquarters of CableLabs®. ITU is
the leading United Nations agency for information and communication
technologies.

During its Louisville meetings, ITU Study Group 9, entitled Integrated
Broadband Cable Networks and Television and Sound Transmission,
approved for standardization a major recommendation contributing to
the advancement of IPTV, Recommendation J.700 “IPTV Service
Requirements and Framework for Secondary Distribution.” Secondary
distribution is an ITU term meaning use of a transmission channel for
distribution of video/audio programs to users at large, for example by
an over-the-air broadcast channel or by means of a fiber or cable
network.

In addition, recommendations relating to second- and third-generation
IPCablecom were “consented” or approved for consideration by the full
ITU for standardization. These recommendations add to a suite of more
than 25 recommendations which have been developed for cable and hybrid
networks primarily designed for television and sound program delivery
to the home as integrated broadband networks to also carry voice and
other time-critical services including video on demand interactive
services.

>From the beginning of this work on IPCablecom up until now, equipment
based upon these recommendations, such as modems, set-top boxes,
signaling equipment, interactive television application platform
interfaces, digital program insertion, and others have had widespread
implementation in networks in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Also, of interest to the movie and theater industries, is
Recommendation J.600 “Transport of Large Screen Digital Imagery (LSDI)
applications that employ MPEG-2 encoded HDTV signals.” Significant
progress was made on a new draft recommendation related to the
transport of program signals conforming to the higher levels of the
LSDI expanded hierarchy as used for contribution and primary
distribution.

The J.600 Recommendation addresses use of a broadband service or
channel for transferring audio or video information to a production
center where post-production processing may take place before
subsequent distribution. Primary distribution is the use of a
transmission channel for transferring audio and/or video information
from a production center to one or several destination points; for
example, to a broadcast transmitting center or the headend of a cable
distribution network. Work in this LSDI area has been done with
interactions between ITU-T Study Group 9, ITU-R Study Group 6, and
other bodies external to the ITU.

The J.202 Recommendation “Harmonization of procedural content formats
for interactive TV applications” was updated to reflect the most
current version of the ETSI GEM (Globally Executable MHP) standard.
GEM forms the common core for similar middleware standards worldwide,
including the OpenCable™ Platform in the US and Korea, ARIB in Japan,
and the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) in most of Europe and
elsewhere.

The ITU vice chairman for APIs, Charlie Sandbank from the United
Kingdom, and the chairman of ITU Study Group 9, Dr. Richard R. Green,
President and CEO of CableLabs, from the United States, discussed
certain actions being contemplated in the United States by the FCC to
require the US cable industry to support an architecture divergent
from the J.200 Recommendation supported by the US in the ITU. As a
result, the two vice chairmen of ITU Study Group 9 sent a letter last
week to the FCC expressing their concerns. The letter is available at
fjallfoss.fcc.gov. A number of participants representing Member States
and Sector Members from Africa, Asia, Europe, Trinidad and Tobago, and
North America were kept very busy and concluded work on a number of
new and revised ITU Recommendations.

Founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry, Cable
Television Laboratories is a non-profit research and development
consortium that is dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications
technologies and to helping its cable operator members integrate those
advancements into their business objectives. Cable operators from
around the world are members. CableLabs maintains web sites at
www.cablelabs.com; www.packetcable.com; www.cablemodem.com;
www.cablenet.org; and www.opencable.com.

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