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Interview with IMTC SIP Parity AG Leader – Charles Eckel

April 22, 2013 by 1 Comment

Charles Eckel

We continue our series of interviews with IMTC members by speaking with Charles Eckel, the Technical Leader II, Media Experience and Analytics at Cisco, and the IMTC SIP Parity Activity Group Leader.

IMTC: How many companies participate in your group today?

Charles Eckel [CE]: We had 12 participating companies from SIP Parity at the last SuperOp Event: Acme Packet, Avaya, BlueJeans, Cisco, Huawei, LG, Lifesize, Magor Corporation, Polycom, Avaya, Teliris and Vidyo.

IMTC: What is the key technology you are testing and what role does it play in UC and communication in general?

CE:  The SIP Parity Activity Group focuses on multimedia telecommunications applications, including providing a video profile for SIP that matches all the capabilities of H.323.conferencing.

IMTC: What standards are being tested?

CE: SIP (RFC 3261), SDP (RFC 4566), RTP (RFC 3551), and H.264 (RFC 6184)

IMTC: What is the group value to the industry?

CE: We do the following:

  • We organize interoperability SIP Parity test efforts, both virtual and face-to-face. This is done in cooperation and coordination with both the Conferencing Interoperability Activity Group and with SIPit (where practical).
  • We provide a forum for members to agree on an overall SIP profile for video. The objective is to bring it to full-feature parity with H.323 video communications.
  • We educate members on the most recent developments in SIP standards and market evolution.

IMTC: Why are you a member of this group and what value does it bring to your company?

CE: Third party interoperability is important to Cisco, and this is the best place for dealing with interoperability issues related to enterprise video conferencing.

IMTC: What were the most important achievements of your group in 2012? How did it support the industry?

CE: Among our achievements:

  • Security Best Practice liaison review period and addressed comments.
  • SuperOp! 2012 characterization of SIP Video Profile and Role Based Video.
  • Best Practices, and ad-hoc testing of Security Best Practices.
  • We began investigation of potential areas for SIP Parity AG/PSS AG interworking.
  • SIP Video Profile Best Practice as IMTC document approved by SIP Parity AG.
  • Draft version circulated and comments received.
  • IETF BFCPBIS nearing completion of BFCP via UDP.
  • The Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP).
  • Session Description Protocol (SDP) Format for Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP) Streams.

IMTC: What are your plans for 2013?

CE: There are a few: 

  • SuperOp! 2013 characterization of SIP Video Profile, SIP Role Based Video, SIP Security Best Practices.
  • Update Role Based Video Best Practice and Test Case documents based on output of IETF BFCPBIS WG.
  • Publish SIP Video Profile Best Practice as an IMTC document (available to IMTC members), which aims to list the use cases that are associated with the bandwidth, flow control, intra-frame request functionalities, and to provide recommendations on best current practice in this field. This document should serve as a reference for video services based on SIP/SDP, from the point of view of a user-agent with video capacity.
  • Publish Role Based Video Best Practice as IMTC document, which describes the best practices for implementing role-based video stream (RBVS) functionality in SIP that is comparable to H.239 for H.323 systems. In particular, it covers the use of video for content sharing, including floor control, alongside main video..
  • Update SIP Security Best Practice and Test Cases documents based on output of IETF BFCPBIS WG.
  • Publish Security Best Practice as an IMTC Document, which describes best practices for implementing security in SIP-based video conferencing end devices.

IMTC: What do you think will change in your field or technology you are testing in the future?

CE: Protocols and implementations will continue to improve and evolve, and there will be blending of what was traditionally enterprise-specific with that which was traditionally consumer focused (e.g. BYOD).

IMTC: What kind of value do you think IMTC brings to your company?

CE: The SIP Parity group is the best place for dealing with interoperability issues related to enterprise video conferencing. The best practices and SuperOp events are very useful to moving our implementations and those of the rest of the industry forward.

IMTC: Thank you, Charles, for the interview.

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Interview With Bo Jönsson – IMS CO-AG Leader

February 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

We continue our a series of interviews with IMTC members, this time with Bo Jönsson, the co-ag leader of the IMS Activity Group at IMTC and the standardization manager of terminal testing at Ericsson AB.

IMTC Blog: Bo, thanks a lot for your time! How many companies participate in your group today?

Bo: 9 companies are participating in the group today: Ericsson, France Telecom, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, RADVISION, Samsung, Sony Mobile, and ST-Ericsson.

IMTC Blog: What is the key technology you are testing and what role does it play in UC and communication in general?

Bo: IMS voice/video according GSMA recommendations PRDs IR.92 and IR.94. This VoLTE initiative is based on 3GPP and the LTE radio access technology which is becoming the basis for all future mobile systems.
3GPP defined telecommunication and IP-based multimedia services are well recognized for mobile and personal communications.

IMTC Blog: What is the group value to the industry? And why does it operate in IMTC?

Bo: To provide IOT possibilities for 3GPP defined IP-based multimedia services. IMTC is a well-recognized organization for interoperability testing.

IMTC Blog: Why are you a member of this group and what value does it bring to your company?

Bo: The enhancement of telecommunication is a key interest for our company. Device IOT testing of 3GPP defined IP-based multimedia services and associated GSMA profiles such as IR.92 (VoLTE) and IR.94 (Video) is an important area to achieve this.

IMTC Blog: What were the most important achievements of your group in 2012? How did it support the industry?

Bo: There are few:

  •  The activity and number of companies has increased.
  • The test documentation for IR.92 is enhanced with more test scenario e.g. SRVCC and IMS Emergency.
  • We have also introduced test documentation for IMS conversational video service according GSMA PRD IR.94.

IMTC Blog: What are your plans for 2013?

BO: We have 3 main goals for 2013:

  • Participate in the IMTC SuperOP! event.
  • Provide more face to face test opportunities.
  • Include GSMA PRD IR.39 “IMS Profile for High Definition Video Conference (HDVC) Service” in the scope for test documentation and face to face testing.

IMTC Blog: What do you think will change in your field or technology you are testing in the future?

Bo: 3GPP defined IP-based multimedia services will become more important for delivering audio, text, video and graphics direct to people in information based services.

IMTC Blog: What kind of value do you think IMTC brings to your company?

BO: IMTC is an organization for engineers that allows to take part of the telecommunication evolution and make it happen in real live testing environments.

We thank Bo for his time and look forward for the upcoming SuperOp! event.

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Filed Under: IMS, IMTC News, Interviews, Right, Technology insight Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Telepresence on the Big Screen

September 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Telepresence In 1902, Georges Méliès, a French magician and filmmaker produced and directed the world’s first science fiction film titled A Trip to the Moon. Since then, science fiction has evolved into one of the most popular and successful genres on both the big and small screen.

In addition to being a beloved genre, science fiction has also served as the inspiration behind many innovative technological breakthroughs. For instance, the television show Star Trek has been recognized as the inspiration for the Bluetooth earpiece, GPS systems and even cell phones. In recent years, Hollywood has been focusing on telepresence, a new form of emerging technology.

While telepresence is already the “talk of the town” in the corporate world, it has yet to make a splash among mass consumers. This is not due to a lack of interest or familiarity with this kind of technology. In fact, moviegoers have grown accustomed to seeing telepresence on the big screen.

In 1977, a young and relatively unknown filmmaker named George Lucas directed the film Star Wars. On top of being one of the most successful films in history, Star Wars was also the first film to portray telepresence technology in the form of a hologram carrying a secret message. Since then, telepresence technology has been showcased in a variety of films such as Surrogates, Gamer and most notably, James Cameron’s Avatar.

When asked by TMCnet to comment on the effect such films have had on audiences, Bob McCandless, CEO of BrightCom, said that the films shape the consumer’s expectations of such products as well as drive the industry towards certain technological solutions.

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Technology insight, Telepresence Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

MPEG DASH Webinar – February 16th, 04:00PM CET

February 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment


Adaptive streaming over HTTP has become the default dominant approach for video distribution.
At the moment, proprietary technologies have been deployed such as as Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming and Adobe Dynamic Streaming, and the industry has been eager to have a unified standard solution. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Technology insight

Industry News Summary – 2011 & 2012, Summaries and Predictions

December 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As we about to enter 2012, the web is filled with summaries of 2011 and predictio

ns for 2012:

 

FierceEnterpriseCommunications did a wonderful summary about all major 2011 events in the industry, while LightReading predicted about 2012 in markets such as Asia and Africa & Middle East and focused on general trends such as UC and consumer devices, among other things (1,2,3).

GigaOM writes about five big things in consumer electronics to watch for in 2012,CNN about the Top 10, and Pyramid Research about top Telecom trends.

Last but not least, some economic predictions from CNN.
Any interesting link about 2011/2012 you think is worth sharing? please use the comment system below.

Happy holidays everyone!

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About the writer: IMTC
Filed Under: Industry News, Technology insight Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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