The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) announces successful completion of SuperOp! 2011, the premier testing event of the telecommunications industry for multimedia communication standards and products.
Interoperability Testing of Voice over LTE (VoLTE)
March 30, 2011 By 1 Comment
International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is pleased to announce that interoperability testing of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) will be one of the key focus areas during their flagship SuperOp! 2011 interoperability testing event in Kona, HI, May 15-20. IMTC’s VoLTE testing will focus on terminals and core network interoperability. IMTC invites all interested parties to participate in this engineering test event.
IMTC has a special area of interest with VoLTE testing. While other organizations may test VoLTE on network interfaces, IMTC has a keen focus for VoLTE testing on terminals and with the core network. This makes the IMTC SuperOp! 2011 testing event unique, and one of the few places to actually accomplish this level of engineer to engineer interoperability testing. A complete network inclusive of LTE access is being hosted by Huawei at the May 2011 SuperOp!, and IMTC is inviting all terminal companies to participate including ST-Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, LG, RIM and others, as well as Operators with interest in VoLTE.
At the June 2010 SuperOp!, participating companies included Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, LifeSize Communications, Nextreaming Corp., Nokia, NXP, Orange France Telecom, PacketVideo, Polycom, RADVISION, RealNetworks, TANDBERG Telecom, Vidiator Technology and Vidyo.
Registration information for SuperOp! 2011 may be found at: https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=944989
Full details including the ‘rules of engagement’ for this engineering only testing event can be found at the link above. This is a closed and confidential interoperability testing event, it is not a public event. Access to IMTC interoperability testing events is available to all IMTC member companies, and invited non-member companies who can contribute to the interop testing activities. IMTC member companies participate in ongoing development of the interoperability testing plans and specifications, organize and conduct face-to-face and virtual interoperability testing events on the regular basis, and provide feedback for improvements to national and international standardization bodies like ITU-T, 3GPP, IETF, GSMA and others.
SuperOp!, organized and conducted by the IMTC annually, is a significant event for the telecommunications, video conferencing and Telepresence sector. It brings together engineers from the leading companies developing unified communications, video communications products and services worldwide. The event includes equipment and service interoperability on combinations of IP networks, and covered a broad range of technologies such as HD Videoconferencing, Telepresence, mobile 3G-324M video, new 3G rate adaptation mechanisms in Packet Switch Streaming, SIP with BFCP and H.323 with H.239, and HTTP Live Streaming features.
About the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC)
The IMTC is an industry-leading, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote and facilitate the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunication products and services based on open international standards. The IMTC hosts interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world. IMTC has hosted more than 50 such events to test SIP, IMS, VoLTE, H.323, 3G-324M, 3G-PSS, Nat/Firewall Traversal, T.120, H .320, and other Voice over IP products and services with each other. The IMTC Board of Directors includes representatives from AT&T, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, LifeSize Communications, Nokia, Polycom, RADVISION and Vidyo. The San Ramon, California-based consortium comprises approximately 40 member organizations from around the globe. Membership is open to any interested party, including vendors of audio, document, and video conferencing hardware and software; academic institutions; government agencies; and non-profit organizations. “The IMTC is making Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime.” Further information on IMTC can be found at http://www.imtc.org.
Contact: Anatoli Levine, IMTC President
Paul Ritchie, IMTC Executive Director
2400 Camino Ramon, Suite #375
San Ramon, CA 94583
+1.925.275.6600
IMTC BOD Interview – Frédéric Gabin, Ericsson
February 14, 2011 By 1 Comment
IMTC Blog is proud to Interview Frédéric Gabin, Standardization Manager at Ericsson, France and IMTC Board of Directors member:
IMTC Blog: Hello Frédéric, Please Tell us about yourself, your positions in Ericsson and past positions.
Mr.Gabin: My name is Frédéric Gabin, I’m French and I live in Paris, France. My role in the Ericsson standardization organization since 2008 is to lead and coordinate the development of Multimedia standards. I started my career as a signal processing research engineer in 1998 and since then was involved in research, system design and standards with both network and mobile terminal vendors.
IMTC Blog: Why did you volunteered to be an IMTC board member?
Mr.Gabin: The IMTC organization has a strong history of making upcoming key multimedia features a reality without which originating standards would look like mere litterature. The board member position gives a direct ability of steering the organization towards the real needs of my company and the industry. I wanted to be part of this.
IMTC Blog: What are your goals as an IMTC board member ?
Mr.Gabin: My goals are to give existing and future AGs visibility and support in their developments by establishing clear directions in agreement with the key industry players.
IMTC Blog: How does IMTC benefit Ericsson?
Mr.Gabin: IMTC benefits Ericsson as well as ST-Ericsson and Sony-Ericsson in that it gives a framework for terminal interop tests of key multimedia services which speeds up deployments and adoption on the market.
IMTC Blog: In your opinion – What are IMTC greatest achievements? what were 2010 greatest achievements?
Mr.Gabin: IMTC greatest achievements in 2010 were that VoLTE F2F test events started February 2-4 (Ericsson AB), Stockholm and October 20-22 (Nokia Siemens Networks), Athens.
IMTC Blog: What are the major goals for IMTC at 2011? What are the major interoperability issues for 2011 (in Ericsson, in the industry as a whole)?
Mr.Gabin: Firstly, with more and more fragmentation in the various multimedia standards and fast pace deployments, for example in streaming services, one major goal for IMTC is to avoid fragmentation itself and focus on the most relevant standards and services. Secondly, the ongoing deployments of LTE networks around the world should drive a focus on VoLTE terminal interoperability undertaken in the IMS AG . This group should grow by involving more operators and device vendors.
We thank Frédéric for his time and dedication.
As always, If your company does IMS, VoLTE – Join IMTC to help shape the future of Telecommunication Interoperability.
Frédéric Gabin can be reached via E-mail: frederic.gabin@ericsson.com or LinkedIN – http://fr.linkedin.com/in/fredericgabin
Frédéric Gabin, Ericsson
IMTC 2010, A year summary
January 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
It’s been a great year for IMTC and the Telecom Industry as a whole, some of our 2010 highlights Were:
* IMTC 2025 Global Virtual Conference was held in April 7th-8th using Radvision’s Scopia and lifestream platforms for broadcast. In the 2025 event we looked into the question – “How will your living room look like in the year 2025?” The two day event was a phenomenal success and attracted hundreds of viewers and many participants from major companies in the Telecom and Video conferencing fields (Cisco, Polycom, Radvision, NXP, PV and more). All the Videos from the 2025 event are available in our Youtube page and Here.
* SuperOP! 2010 - The annual industry flagship interoperability testing event, was highly successful and brought together more than 50 engineers from 14 companies from around the world. IMTC president Anatoli Levine wrote about it: “SuperConnect 2010, consisting of about 35 endpoints and servers, including a 3-screen telepresence system, took about 37 minutes from start to finish, with brilliant High Definition Video shining all over the room”.
* IMTC SIP Parity AG participated in SIPit27 Event – This year event was focused mainly on Video Interoperability, rather than voice. You can read the event summary Here.
* IMTC took ownership of the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) protocol and established a new TIP Activity Group. Read the TIP section for more details or send an email to TIP_info@imtc.org.
* IMTC First TIP Webinar was held at December 08. We had connectivity problems that prevented some of the speakers and registered users to participate – We apologize for that and will offer recordings of the event.
Additional TIP events are planned – further updates will be announced via our blog.
* IMTC Annual Meeting was held in November 3, 2010. IMTC had a joint panel on the future of video with speakers from IMTC, UCIF and SIP Forum.
* IMTC President, Anatoli Levin Participated at AppTime Conference in LA, at the 4GWE/ITExpo event. Anatoli was also interviewed by Erin Monda for TMCNET 4GWE news.
* IMTC IMS AG leader and BoD member, Andrea Basso, participated at the 3G00/ETSI IMS November 2010 workshop on Implementation, Deployment and Testing.
We are looking forwards into 2011 events and activities – Stay Tuned!
Is there a place for Rich Communication Suite in the mobile future?
July 12, 2010 By 7 Comments
We have asked Jose M.Recio from Solaiemes to talk about RCS and to shed some more light about his IMTC 2025 presentation (Jose participated in the Triple Play Session and presented RCS examples).
Solaiemes creates communication solutions built upon the RCS features of the IMS standards.
RCS (Rich Communcation Suite) is an industy effort driven by a group of operators, infrastructure and device vendors – Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens networks, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, etc.
The main RCS features are -
Enchaned Phonebook, Messenging and Calls – Sharing of multimedia content, chat and presence that works across devices and operators.
I’ve asked Jose to talk a bit about RCS and his view on the mobile market:
Hi Jose, can you share your thoughts about RCS and how your what your company does in that field?
Jose: RCS, short for RichCommunicationSuite, it is a coordinated effort, driven by GSMA (the mobile industry association) and backed by the major players to develop a common set of “beyond-SMS-and-voice” basic enablers that are available out of the box in mobile, and work seamlessly across carriers and are also accessible from a PC/broadband client.
Think messaging, video-sharing, etc. available even in cheap handsets, preinstalled and working across carriers. One single use case for doing zillions of things.
Isn’t these features available on many smart-phones?
Jose: Yes, that’s true. But that there are billions of users that are using feature, cheap, phones.
Besides, carrier services are a bit more trusted, especially by businesses.
Being able to choose – would you develop a service that billions can use or an app that only the owners of a given handset running a given software version can access?
And what would be a good example of an application available to all? SMS!
If a user just knows how to send a SMS, he knows how to access millions of “applications”: insult politicians in TV, receive credit cards alerts, buy ringtones, and of course send a SMS to his loved one. RCS is meant just for that – to create the future mobile applications to be used across all devices – If done properly, RCS allows developers to go beyond SMS, with a richer experience. Many business cases will be discovered. Just leave the ecosystem time to develop.
Are there any devices that support RCS today?
Jose: The “traditional” Telco ecosystem is fully committed on paper to RCS. Devices: NSN, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG… there are Android and prototype iPhone clients. There is also an IOT event per quarter to test interoperability.
For the first time All 3 operators in France, Telefonica and Orange in Spain and all operators in Korea – They all work together in coordinated launches.
Are there any RCS applications currently available or in Beta?
Jose: That’s where solaiemes is focused: Createing APIs so the innovation powerhouse out there in the net can use RCS for things we can’t even think of. That’s exactly what I presented in the IMTC 2025 presentation – How do you put triple play services in a device/screen where you can’t easily deploy a full software client? My IMTC presentation contains test cases (http://solaiemes.com/index.php?id=94)
Today, some of the features of mobile devices aren’t inter-operable – 3G video calls and iPhone Facetime – Will RCS applications will be interoperable with high end smartphone applications?
Jose: That’s exactly the point, Many Services do not make sense any more from person-to-person. However they make a lot of sense when you introduce a business process or an application: SMS and video calls are very good examples.
The RCS applications that we see as successful would be the ones linked to business apps or cloud-based/community-based use cases.
Check for example the Twitter example in the previous Link – a user may have a native full twitter client (on high end smartphone, or a PC) or a RCS app (feature/simple devices) – Twitter will be the same for both.
SMS success for consumers and carriers (main source of data revenues) is based on ubiquitous presence of the basic enabler (every mobile phone supports SMS) and common use experience and use case. It doesn’t matter if you send or receive a SMS for voting in a TV program, buy a ringtone, get a notification of a credit card transaction, ect. It’s all the same.
On summery – Carries can either look for the SMS way: Common basic experience, based on a Telco enabler (RCS?), for many services. Or for the App way – try to grab one of the “must have” future few applications.
Based on what happened so far, it seems more reasonable to go for the first one – Carrier intermediating third parties offering services over the enabler.
