Ericsson Debuts IMS IPTV Middleware in U.S.

Bob Wallace

LM Ericsson Telephone Co. (ERIC) today announced commercial availability of what it claims is the first “IMS-integrated middleware” for the U.S. market, several months after the package was first announced to the masses.

Ericsson claims the IPTV solution is aligned with the Open IPTV Forum specifications, and is the first solution in the world to be pre-integrated with IMS and also operates across traditional networks.

The Open IPTV Forum is charged with pulling together specs from a number of different groups that cover everything from the IPTV headend all the way down the ecosystem line to the set-top box in the home. The group notes, it does not create standards itself.

The middleware brings together Ericsson offerings such as IPTV network infrastructure, video processing solutions and VoD, and interoperates with products from Accedo Broadband, Agama Technologies, Amino, HP, SecureMedia, Sun Microsystems, Tilgin, Verimatrix, and ZyXEL.

While the list includes multiple established TV service suppliers, key IPTV providers Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are conspicuous in their absence from the forum’s membership list. Members beyond those cited in the press materials include Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Further, other broader industry groups such as the Multiservice Forum are working to bring together IMS and IP services such as IPTV to ensure device and software interoperability to fuel eventual blended, converged services not found today.

The group recently held a 12-day Global Multiservice Interoperability (GMI) test event spanning three continents, five test labs, three carriers (Verizon, BT and China Mobile) and tested 22 vendor’s devices, with the focus being bringing IP services and their related devices into the IMS core.

Ericsson claims its package lets operators create, test and deploy personalized and interactive TV. That includes the combination of communication and entertainment spanning wireline and wireless services.

IMS extends the TV experience with integrated communication and delivers convergence enablers such as presence and messaging/chat. Combining these capabilities with Internet services creates additional opportunities for service creation and enhancement, according to the vendor.