IPTV Architecture – The IIF IPTV Architecture Committee has primarily been working on content on demand (COD) which is a generalization of video on demand (VOD) that includes audio and other content. The COD standard defines the architecture, protocol diagrams, Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) messages, and other elements to support both streaming COD as well as downloaded COD. Many options are in the COD standard. COD can stream with RTP on UDP, or with HTTP on TCP. IMS and non-IMS (HTTP or RTSP) session establishment are both supported. “Trick-play” VCR control can be via either RTSP or via HTTP progressive download. Completion of the COD standard is behind schedule, but it should be done soon. After COD, the Architecture Committee will work on Internet-Sourced Content, IPv6, document maintenance issues, IPV6, and possibly more advanced IPTV services. (See our latest ATIS IPTV Interop Forum (IIF) report for details and analysis.)

IPTV Security Solutions (ISS) – The IIF Security Solutions (ISS) Committee is specifying security robustness levels and profiles, unique device IDs, PKI certificates, certificate management and revocation, a secure execution environment, separable security, common APIs, a default encryption algorithm, secure time, and secure download mechanisms; all to enable IPTV Digital Rights Management (DRM) interoperability without mandating an entire DRM system. ISS has established the Secure Execution Environment (SEE) with security robustness levels ranging from low to high. A unique device identity has been agreed by the IIF to be a combination of a globally-unique manufacturer Organizational Unique Identifier (OUI) plus a manufacturer-assigned ID; this could be just an Ethernet MAC address, or it could be longer. A definition of secure time; and an update to the IIF default scrambling algorithm including test cases, were completed at this meeting. (See our latest ATIS IPTV Interop Forum (IIF) report for details and analysis.)

IPTV Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) – At this meeting, the QoS Metrics Committee started work on stereoscopic (left and right) 3D IPTV QoS and QoE. IPTV QoE recommendations are being developed that focus on perceptual quality and other aspects crucial to customer satisfaction, and a categorization of QoE was created at this meeting. Joint work with the Video Services Forum (VSF) has defined new metrics for analyzing picture and compression quality, which are incorporated into the updated IIF standard for linear (broadcast) IPTV QoS metrics. The IIF QoS Metrics Committee is also working on QoS metrics for content on demand (COD), and a streamlined process for evaluating algorithms that estimate user-perceived video QoE. The QoS Metrics Committee recently completed the Implementer’s Guide to QoS Metrics, and a standard for MPEG transport stream verification. (See our latest ATIS IPTV Interop Forum (IIF) report for details and analysis.)

PTSC Task Force on Next Generation Carrier Interconnection — The PTSC NGCI Task Force sent the initial set of four output documents to publication and began work on a new document to define guidelines for using these documents. The PTSC NGCI Task Force also began work on corresponding Release 2 Technical Reports. (See our latest ATIS PTSC report for details and analysis.)

Identity Management and Service Provider Identity — The focus of ATIS Identity Management work at this meeting was on integrating output from the ITU-T and from 3GPP into the ATIS documents. (See our latest ATIS PTSC report for details and analysis.)

Acceptance of Femtos into Multiple Standards – The FF overall goal is to increase acceptance femto devices into existing and new mobile standards. Since the inception of the FF, this has been the overall goal. But FF is NOT a standards body and is doing this across many standards bodies via a liaison and quick reaction capability. WiMAX Forum and FF issued a joint press release during this meeting. A joint session between multiple working groups was held where a tutorial covering LTE was presented. (See our latest Femto Forum report for details and analysis.)

Classification of Femto Devices as Base Stations or Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) – Regulators from around the world continue to take different views of femto products. This will impact the volume of femto deployments. A new regulator database has been implemented by the FF. It is to be made available to the membership after this meeting. (See our latest Femto Forum report for details and analysis.)

New Question on Telepresence Systems - Proposals from USA and Huawei Technologies to begin work on telepresence systems in SG 16 was discussed in various Questions at this meeting. At the closing plenary of the SG 16 meeting, it was agreed to create a new Question on telepresence systems. (See our latest ITU-T SG 16 report for details and analysis.)

New Work Item on Emergency Telecommunications Service (ETS) - Q3/16 agreed to a new work item to provide sufficient detail on the use of the Emergency Telecommunications Service (ETS) in Media Gateway Controllers/Media Gateways (MGC/MGs) that use H.248. (See our latest ITU-T SG 16 report for details and analysis.)

Internet of Things - Q25/16 discussed a proposal to initiate relevant standardization work on Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is a very broad concept involving work (some already underway) in other ITU-T Study Groups, other SDOs, consortia, and forums. Q25/16 agreed to send a liaison to the ITU-T Joint Coordination Activity on Network Identity (ITU-T JCA-NID) regarding coordination of IoT standardization initiatives. (See our latest ITU-T SG 16 report for details and analysis.)

Smart Metering - Q15/16 agreed to start work to develop a new draft Recommendation F.USN-SM with the title of “Requirements and capabilities of ubiquitous sensor networks for smart metering applications and services”. (See our latest ITU-T SG 16 report for details and analysis.)

Verification Involving PSTN Reachability (VIPR) – Cisco has developed a new technology for enabling IP communications between enterprises. It makes use of peer to peer technology to advertise phone numbers, and also depends on routing the first call to a particular phone number via the PSTN, and using shared knowledge of such initial calls in order to verify the advertisements. This is targeted mainly toward enterprise communications, including videoconferencing and unified communications. Since it focuses on calling between companies as opposed to strictly within companies, it has the potential to erode landline based call volumes as well as call volumes of SIP trunking services provided by telcos. (See our latest IETF report for details and analysis.)

Mini-ITLA Form Factor Project Started - The OIF’s Physical And Data Link Layer (PLL) Working Group (WG) agreed to revisit the minimum required mechanical and thermal characteristics for an Integratable Tunable Laser Assembly (ITLA). The new form factor will be referred to as uITLA. The uITLA is intended to supplement, not replace, the existing ITLA Multi-Source Agreement (MSA). The uITLA can provide an alternative laser solution for ITLA customers contemplating the integration of a specific vendor gold box laser on their host printed circuit board due to space constraints. (See our latest OIF report for details and analysis.)

The OIF Security Documents Are Rapidly Progressing - Four of the security documents from the OAM&P and Security WG have reached major ballot milestones. The OIF Control Plane Logging and Auditing with Syslog IA passed Principal Ballot and was submitted for publication at this Meeting. Also at this Meeting, the Security Extension for UNI and E-NNI 2.0 IA was released for Principal Ballot. The Security for Management Interfaces to Network Elements 2.0 and the End-To-End Authentication And Integrity For The OIF UNI IAs were released for Straw Ballot. (See our latest OIF report for details and analysis.)

Harmonization Work Between 3GPP and the TM Forum – As a result of a proposal from Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone (concerning LTE management), the TM Forum has started joint work with 3GPP to define a set of harmonized interfaces for the management of wireless and wire-line resources and services. (See our latest TM Forum report for details and analysis.)

Joint Open Source Interface Framework (JOSIF) – JOSIF, an open source project sponsored by the TM Forum, has recently completed Release 1.0 of the interface framework, which includes both interface design patterns and associated tooling to generate interfaces. (See our latest TM Forum report for details and analysis.)

ITU-T SG15 Working Party 1 Continues To Progress XG-PON Recommendations - The first Recommendations in the Next Generation Passive Optical Network (XG-PON) series reached consent at the September – October 2009 SG 15 Meeting. At this Meeting, new Recommendation G.987.3, 10-Gigabit-Capable Passive Optical Network (XG-PON) Systems: Transmission Convergence Layer Specification, reached consent. Revised versions of G.987 and G.987.2 were also consented. There are now four G.987 series Recommendations that form the foundation for XG-PON functionality and topology. (See our latest ITU-T SG 15 report for details and analysis.)

Seven L Series Recommendations from SG15 Reach Consent - Seven new L Series Recommendations developed by Questions in Working Party 2 reached consent at this Meeting. The L Series deals with construction, installation and protection of cables and other elements of the outside plant. The topics covered ranged from mapping underground networks to optical fiber cables for drop applications. (See our latest ITU-T SG 15 report for details and analysis.)

3GPP Provides Guidance on the Idle-State Signaling Reduction (ISR) Capability – TSG-SA discussed company contributions containing proposed Release 8 and Release 9 CRs on support for an ISR capability. It was agreed that SA WG2 should consider this issue for Release 9, taking into account that the issue only occurs in heterogeneous networks, and can be controlled by manual configuration in Release 8. The Release 8 CRs were rejected and the Release 9 CRs were remanded to SA WG2 for further consideration. (See our latest 3GPP report for details and analysis.)

OTN Over Packet Fabric Protocol Project Started - The OIF’s Physical And Data Link Layer (PLL) Working Group’s request for a new project on the specification of a protocol that supports Optical Transport Network (OTN) signal switching over a packet switching fabric was approved at this Meeting. The goal of the protocol is to support the development of Optical Transport Platforms (OTP) that are capable of switching Constant Bit Rate (CBR) signals and packet formatted signals through a common switching fabric. (See our latest OIF report for details and analysis.)

100G Optical Receiver And Transmitter IAs Published - The 100G Optical Receiver and Transmitter IAs passed Principal Member Ballot and have been published by the OIF on the public portion of its web site. The Receiver IA is OIF-DPC-RX-01.0 and the Transmitter IA is OIF-PMQ-TX-01.0. As of this Report, the OIF has published four significant documents based on its 100G Long-Distance DWDM Transmission Project. It is continuing its role as a leading organization making 100G transmission systems a practical and widely available technology. (See our latest OIF report for details and analysis.)

100G Electromechanical IA Released For Principal Ballot - The Implementation Agreement for a 100G Long-Haul DWDM Transmission Module - Electromechanical (MSA-100G LH-EM) project was approved at the October 2008 Meeting. The objective of this project is to define the electrical interface and the dimensions for an optical line interface module. The IA passed Straw Ballot after the February 2010 OIF Meeting and has been released for Principal Member Ballot at this Meeting. This is another component of the OIF’s 100G Long-Distance DWDM Transmission Project that has progressed very quickly. (See our latest OIF report for details and analysis.)

Acceptance of Femtos into Multiple Standards – The FF overall goal is to increase acceptance femto devices into existing and new mobile standards. But FF is NOT a standards body and is doing this across many standards via a liaison and quick reaction capability. (See our latest Femto Forum report for details and analysis.)

Classification of Femto Devices as Base Stations or Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) – Regulators from around the world are taking different views of femto products. This will impact the volume of femto deployments. (See our latest Femto Forum report for details and analysis.)

Plugfest – The FF plugfest will allow for the interoperability testing of femto devices from multiple vendors. This could easily accelerate femto deployments. (See our latest Femto Forum report for details and analysis.)

Technical Work Group Status - Significant overall progress made in 2010 for all the 6 TWGs and all are expected to meet the schedule of the deliverables. It was expected that by the end of 2Q 2010, most of the work of the TWGs will be completed. Therefore, NGMN is soliciting new contributions for the next round of technical work items and had issued requests to its members in March 2010 for proposing new work items. (See our latest NGMN Alliance report for details and analysis.)

Open BBU RRH Interface (OBRI) - The OBRI TWG made significant progress in generating interest among NGMN members. The P-OBRI project is to develop the implementation recommendations for an open internal interface of radio base stations between BaseBandUnit (BBU) and the RemoteRadioHead (RRH). NGMN OBRI activity is about to be handed over to a new environment, which is the ETSI ORI group (Open Radio Equipment Interface) group. The first ETSI ORI meeting is planned at 25th -27th of May in Turin, Italy. (See our latest NGMN Alliance report for details and analysis.)

Home-Macro BTS Interaction - A key issue in the deployment of Home BTS (or HeNB) is its interaction with the Macro BTS. The introduction of HeNB is potentially disruptive to the traditional cellular management paradigm as the HeNBs are expected to be deployed in large number and they do not have fixed locations. The Home-Macro BTS Interaction TWG provides a set of solution ideas addressing this problem and is ready to make recommendation to 3GPP. (See our latest NGMN Alliance report for details and analysis.)

NGN Architecture — All Last Call AAP comments on draft Recommendation Y.NGN-FRA-REV1 were resolved and the document was approved (AAP) at this meeting. The Revision 1 draft has taken the approach of simplifying the main architecture figure by illustrating only functional groupings without illustrating the detailed Functional Entities. (See our latest ITU-T NGN-GSI report for details and analysis.)

Requirements and Framework allowing Accounting and Charging Capabilities in NGN — Q.3/13 progressed and consented (AAP) draft Recommendation Y.2233 Rev. 1, Requirements and framework allowing accounting and charging capabilities in NGN at this meeting. Editorial reviews of draft Recommendation Y.2233 occurred during several working sessions held during the Q.3/13 meetings. (See our latest ITU-T NGN-GSI report for details and analysis.)

NGN Security and Authentication — Q.16/13 continues to progress several draft Recommendations addressing NGN security. (See our latest ITU-T NGN-GSI report for details and analysis.)

NGN Identity Management — Q.16/13 continues to progress the series of draft Recommendations addressing Identity Management (IdM) for Next Generation Networks (NGN). At this meeting Y.2721 (formerly Y.ngnIdMreq) was finalized and recommended for determination (TAP). A Supplement, “IdM mechanism” to the Y.2720 series of Recommendations was also developed and recommended for approval. (See our latest ITU-T NGN-GSI report for details and analysis.)

PTSC Task Force on Next Generation Carrier Interconnection — The PTSC NGCI Task Force completed development of its four interconnection documents and requested that the PTSC issue Letter Ballots to approve this work. Interim virtual meetings were scheduled to begin discussion of the scope of future documents and testing plans. (See our latest ATIS PTSC report for details and analysis.)

Identity Management and Service Provider Identity — The focus of ATIS Identity Management work at this meeting was on the Single Sign-On service as a user of Identity Management functionality. Agreement was reached to apply the work of 3GPP on SIP Digest credentials to the service. (See our latest ATIS PTSC report for details and analysis.)

NGN Accounting Management Standards — TMOC is updating its current accounting management standards for packet-based services (including NGN) and also influencing the NGN accounting management requirements and framework being produced by ITU-T Study Group 13. (See our latest ATIS TMOC report for details and analysis.)

Ordering for IPTV Advertising — Following the completion of its IPTV Ordering Framework standard, TMOC is continuing work towards the specification of an Application Programming Interface (API) to facilitate ordering for IPTV advertising. (See our latest ATIS TMOC report for details and analysis.)

IPTV Architecture – The IIF IPTV Architecture Committee has primarily been working on content on demand (COD) which is a generalization of video on demand (VOD) that includes audio. The COD standard is defining the architecture, protocol diagrams, message exchange, and other elements necessary to support both streaming COD as well as downloaded COD. Many options are going into the COD standard to satisfy various cable and telecom interests. COD can stream with RTP on UDP, or with HTTP on TCP. IMS and non-IMS session establishment are both supported. “Trick-play” VCR control can be via either RTSP or via HTTP progressive download. The COD standard should be completed soon, in May 2010. After COD, the Architecture Committee may work on document maintenance issues, IPV6, Internet-Sourced Content, advanced IPTV advertising, and then new phase three work items. (See our latest ATIS IPTV Interop Forum (IIF) report for details and analysis.)

IPTV Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) – The QoS Metrics Committee completed the Implementer’s Guide to QoS Metrics at this meeting; this describes how to use QoS Metrics in practice for testing and monitoring IPTV. The QoS Metrics Committee also completed the draft standard for MPEG transport stream verification at this meeting; this is a pointer standard to SCTE-142. IPTV QoE recommendations are being developed that focus on perceptual quality, and include other aspects crucial to customer satisfaction such as a recently added section on usability. Joint work with the Video Services Forum (VSF) is developing new metrics for analyzing picture and compression quality, which are being incorporated into the IIF standard for linear (broadcast) IPTV QoS metrics. The IIF QoS Metrics Committee is also working on QoS metrics for content on demand (COD), and a streamlined process for evaluating algorithms that estimate user-perceived video QoE. (See our latest ATIS IPTV Interop Forum (IIF) report for details and analysis.)

E2MD BoF for Mapping E.164 Numbers to MetaData – A BoF meeting was held to discuss E.164 to MetaData (“E2MD”). The purpose was to determine whether the IETF should form a working group to solve the problem of using a Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) application, akin to ENUM, for storing and retrieving metadata associated with telephone numbers using DNS. The chairs of the meeting were Dean Willis of SoftArmor Systems and Bernie Höneisen of Ucom Standards Track Solutions Company. The meeting was well attended and was quite controversial, and the one hour allocated for this meeting was insufficient. The meeting failed to produce consensus for the IETF to charter this work, but the proponents are very likely to have another attempt in a subsequent IETF meeting. (See our latest IETF report for details and analysis.)

3GPP Discusses Proposed Modifications to the 3GPP TSG Plenary Schedules – TSG-SA reviewed several multi-company contributions on proposed modification to the 3GPP TSG Plenary Schedules. TSG-SA agreed to retain four TSG plenary meetings each year, but to modify the current schedule of TSG plenary meetings to more clearly accommodate two longer TSG periods intended for two WG meetings and two shorter TSG periods intended for one WG meeting. The 2nd and the 4th TSG meeting periods should be extended to allow two WG meetings. The TSG leaders were requested to draft a time plan following these principles and to bring their proposal for consideration to the TSG#48 plenary meetings. (See our latest 3GPP report for details and analysis.)

PTSC Task Force on Next Generation Carrier Interconnection — The PTSC NGCI Task Force progressed its four interconnection documents, clarifying the scope of the Information Gathering Form, adopting a ‘most likely’ Operating Configuration, agreeing to an initial SIP profile for voice services, and starting development of the test suite. (See our latest ATIS PTSC report for details and analysis.)

Identity Management and Service Provider Identity — The three ATIS Identity Management documents under development (the Identity Management Requirements, the Identity Management Mechanisms, and the Identity Management Use Cases) were revised. New text was agreed for one new and three placeholder sections in the Identity Management Requirements document. The Identity Management Mechanisms document incorporated PKI-based authentication. Three new use cases were added to the Identity Management Use Cases document. (See our latest ATIS PTSC report for details and analysis.)

Service Creation, Delivery and Enablers - These areas are heavily addressed by several standards such as TM Forum Service Delivery Framework (SDE), ETSI-TISPAN in NGN OSS Interface Architecture and Subscription Management, ITU-T/SG4 in NGN Architecture. The purpose of ATIS SON is to survey the landscape, identify relevant standards, perform a gap analysis and possibly propose standard enhancement to bridge the gaps. (See our latest ATIS SON Forum report for details and analysis.)

Policy and Data Models - ATIS SON has a working group dedicated to realizing a common data and policy model with consistent syntax and semantics for communication, Web OSS/BSS, IT infrastructure/virtualization, and converged services. (See our latest ATIS SON Forum report for details and analysis.)