Industry giants form IPTV forum

Several of the biggest names in IT and telecoms have banded together to create an open forum to decide on standards for IPTV.

The Open IPTV Forum includes AT&T, Ericsson, France Telecom, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, Sony and Telecom Italia.

The Forum is looking to develop new IPTV standards and bring together current technologies to work more efficiently. The eventual goal is to produce a full IPTV standard that can be applied by all manufacturers to achieve full interoperability.

The move is also seen as an important step in dealing with the threat to IPTV from Web 2.0 internet TV sites such as YouTube.

"There are plenty who argue that IPTV will be short-lived because of competition from what are now termed in the US 'over the top' providers such as Google, Yahoo, Joost and, most recently, Babelgum, " said Annelise Berendt, senior analyst at Ovum.

"These offerings effectively allow consumers to bypass telco-controlled, and indeed CATV, satellite TV and terrestrial TV, services and pull content towards them over the public internet.

"We believe there is room for IPTV and internet TV, and that players from both camps will be more successful with certain consumer segments than others."

The first standards to receive attention will be IP Multimedia Subsystem and Digital Living Network Alliance, but content protection, managed network interfaces and interoperability with retail consumer devices are also under consideration.