• SuperOP! 2011 event will host an ad-hoc meeting for forming a SVC Activity Group:
  
  SVC has been gaining considerable interest in the video communications industry, with most companies having announced support for it in current or future products. At the same time, there is on-going standardization activity in SVC and related subjects in UCIF as well as the IETF. SVC is currently covered by two standards, the H.264 coding specification and the IETF RTP payload format for SVC (to become RFC 6190). Beyond the SDP offer/answer parameters defined in the payload format, however, it is becoming apparent that the architectural changes made possible by scalable (including simulcast) coding require corresponding signalling support. This meeting will explore these issues and discuss the possibility of creating an SVC AG within IMTC’s Requirements Group to address these new architectures.”
  For more information about SVC & IMTC, please contact: Anatoli Levine (alevine@radvision.com) or Alex Eleftheriadis (alex@vidyo.com).

• IMTC TIP Webinar Since last October IMTC has taken the ownership of TIP (Telepresence Interoperability Protocol). TIP allows immersive multi-screen interoperability across multi-vendor Telepresence systems and is leading Telepresence Interoperability protocol available today in Industry. TIP is now developed IMTC TIP activity group with participation from major Telepresence Vendors. IMTC is hosting a special TIP Webinar at IMTC SuperOp! on May 18^th 3PM- 5PM EST. The Webinar will focus on Technical Overview of TIP Protocol and adoption use cases presented by co-chairs of TIP Activity group from AT&T, Cisco and Polycom. Access to TIP Webinar events is available to all IMTC member companies, and non-member companies interested in adopting TIP for their product and services.Event Access Details:Date & Time – May 18^th 3PM- 5PM EST
  Conference Bridge Details:
  To connect from your desktop, go to http://www.tryscopia.com/scopia?ID=51876&autojoin
  For other options (including connecting with presentation only or watching the webcast), go to http://www.tryscopia.com/scopia?ID=51876
  We recommend you install the desktop client beforehand. To install the client, go to http://www.tryscopia.com/scopia?client
  H.323 dial-in:
  To connect from a video-conferencing device, dial 65.51.241.196
  Phone dial-in:
  To connect from a phone, please dial 201-773-7100 and enter 51876

For further information, question or comments please contact pritchie@inventures.com

VoLTE, VoIP and Carriers
Carl Ford from Crossfire Media writes about VoLTE in Net Neutrality and business perspectives. Head to TMCnet for the article.

(Yet another) VoLTE webinar – May 11, 2011
The following webinar by Meik Kottkamp from Rohde & Schwarz will explain VoLTE basics and testing practices – Head to EEtimes for registration. Radvision VoLTE webinar will be held in May 5, 2011, details can be found here.

Huawei files lawsuits against ZTE
Huawei filed patent-infringement lawsuits against ZTE over patents related to LTE data card and infringement of Huawei’s trademark. Huawei claims ZTE used Huawei trademarks in some of it’s LTE data cards. Fore more info, check FirceWireless article.

New Telepresence products by Polycom

• Polycom Eagle-Eye Director will create a ‘personalized conference room experience’  by utilizing voice triangulation, face-finding technology and a dual-camera tracking system. The system will center and zoom automatically on the speaking party for a personalized one-to-many experience.
• HDX 4500 is an all-in-one solution for business executives and small groups. HDX 4500 will offer an integrated system with a 24 inch screen, H264 High Profile encoding in 720p60 and 1080p30 modes and Optional four-way MPPlus for multi-point extension.
• Polycom Telepresence m100 is a software based solution that enables content sharing in a video conference and connection to any standards-based telepresence solutions, including both H.323 and SIP deployments. the M100 will support both PCs and Tablet devices connectivity.

Source: Polycom.

Cisco Umi Interoperability
Cisco announced that it’s Home Telepresence offering – Umi, will be interoperatable with ‘Umi-Connect‘ – A umi software client for Mac and PC and Cisco’s professional Telepresence systems.
This announcement puts Umi in a whole different perspective, as Umi can now be used for business purposes, i.e – home workers.
In addition, Cisco revelaed a new 720P only version, for a cheaper $399 price and lowered the monthly fee (for a yearly plan) to 9.95$ a month from 24.99$ a month.
Lack of interoperability and high ownership cost were major points of criticism when Cisco introduce Umi and it remains to be seen how this latest move will improve Umi acceptance in home and SOHO markets.

3G4G blog posted a short article about RCS (or in it’s latest form – RCS-e)
The article gives a good overview of what RCS is, and is a recommended read. Back in July 2010 we interviewed Jose M.Recio from Solaimes about RCS and it’s relevancy in the age of the smartphone – As it seems, it’s still is.

Panasonic Viera Blu-ray players to include Skype
Panasonic announced Skype support for it’s new blu-ray player line (2011). Video-Chat will be supported via the Freetalk Conference Camera, which will cost 99$ and be available starting this month.

Spectrume Reform Legistlation
US Senators Olympia Snowe and John Kerry recently introduced the Reforming Airwaves by Developing Incentives and Opportunistic Sharing (RADIOS) Act.  The proposed RADIOS Act aims to provide FCC and NTIA detailed information needed for smarter allocation of the Radio spectrum.

LTE sprint
Spirt is one of the few operators in USA that use CDMA for voice and data connectivity – Steve Elfman, Sprint’s president of network operations said that the company will make a decision regarding LTE in mid-year, however if Sprint does decide to use LTE it could be deployed by year-end 2013.

A few days ago, Polycom announced support for the Cisco/IMTC - Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) standard.
The Telepresence Interoperability Protocol was developed by Cisco to allow multi-screen interoperability between Telepresence systems from different vendors. The protocol was transferred to IMTC for on-going development and is offered in a royalty-free license.

The announcement was promoted in PR channels of both Polycom and Cisco, a rather unique sight:


David Benham, IMTC TIP Activity Group Co-Chair responded to the announcement, indicating the importance of the protocol to the industry:
“We are pleased to hear that Polycom is joining other companies in adopting the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP), the only open, multi-screen interoperability protocol available today.   In mid 2010, Cisco transferred ownership of TIP to IMTC so it can provide stewardship of the protocol, offer TIP royalty-free to anyone as well as manage the TIP open source project.   We look forward to Polycom implementing TIP, which helps improve overall market acceptance of Telepresence systems and services.”

TIP support will allow Polycom Telepresence equipment to participate in a HD video-conference with Cisco products. Polycom UC Intelligent Core MCU will support Cisco’s TIP from Q2 2011.
Polycom isn’t the first Company outside Cisco to support TIP – The protocol is licensed by many companies including Radvision, LifeSize (Logitech) and Tandberg (now a part of Cisco).

For more info about TIP, check our TIP Page.

Polycom announce support for TIP
Polycom Inc. announced future support for the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol:
IMTC TIP protocol was developed by Cisco to enable multiscreen interoperability with multi-vendor Telepresence systems. Polycom MCU – “UC Intelligent Core Platform” will support TIP from Q2 2011.
More about TIP in our special TIP Hub : http://blog.imtc.org/index.php/tip

Tip Webinar Recording
For those of you that missed the first Telepresence Interoperability Protocol Webinar, here is the full recording:

We thank David Benham from Cisco,  for the help with the editing and distribution.

Skype Easter-egg allows easy setup of multi-party calls
Skype hidden feature creates URL links for Multi-Party calls invitations – In order to create a URL link for a multi-party call, type “/” from the group chat window. The result will be a URL link directing to the call – for more details, check VoiceOnTheWeb Article.

Telstra CTO calls Femtocell ‘A Dumb Idea”
In Mobile World Congress 2011, Hugh Bradlaw talked about his views on Femtocells – “Femtocells — I usually classify these in the dumb-idea-of-the-week category.” He said that Femtocells are an ‘Admission of Defeat’ and that LTE isn’t the end of all capacity problems – QOS is.

Facebook on SIM?
While smartphones slowly becoming a norm for cellular phones, less capable devices are still the most common form – And while facebook have about 500million user-base, less than half of it has smartphones that enable web/application access to facebook.
Gemalto, the world largest SIM manafucture, announced the development of a SIM facebook client, that will support just about every type of sim-based mobile phone.
Interactions with Facebook (statuses, friend requests, etc.) will be sent as Class 2 SMS data. Read more about it at 3G4G Blog.

FaceFlow – In-browser Group Conferencing
TMCnet recently posted an article about “FaceFlow”, a small startup by a 21 years old Canadian student named Dany Pelletier.
FaceFlow (with a name non-surprisingly similar to Apple’s Facetime) leverage the Flash Player 10.1 support for RTMFP Groups and enable 3 user free video group calling straight from your browser.

Cisco Cius tablet to go live with Verizon 4G service
Mike Dolan from FierceVoIP reports that Cisco Cius will be launching on Verizon network in Spring 2011. Verizon 4G network was recently launched at December 2010 and is expected for nationwide coverage by 2013.

VoLTE ready (Based on VoLGA) Providers
In the great blog WirelessMoves by Martin Sauter, Martin talks about one entrance berrier for LTE smartphones and that’s VoLTE availability.

Cisco Reinventing TV?
CES 2011 brought us many innovations, one of them is the Cisco Videoscape – what Cisco calls “A service provider solution” for the future of the TV. Cisco Videoscape is a delivery platform for service providers and a set-top box for the consumers.
Cisco hopes to attract ISPs with both hardware/software solutions: Videoscape Media Suite and the Cisco Conductor for Videoscape and the consumer soltutions: The Videoscape media gateway, Videoscape IP set-top box and Videscape software clients.
Videoscape is Cisco’s attempt of unifying video consumption at home – making it simple and accessible. At the heart of the system is the media gateway – it will function as a routing and multimedia device and allow the consumer to watch Video and Web content on any connected network device (TV, PC, mobile device). Read More at our Videoscape Post.

Cisco Reinventing TV?
CES 2011 brought us many innovations; one of them is the Cisco Videoscape – A “service provider solution” for the future of the TV.

Cisco Videoscape is a delivery platform for service providers and a set-top box/media gateway for the consumers.
Cisco hopes to attract service providers with both hardware/software solutions:
Videoscape Media Suite and the Cisco Conductor for Videoscape and the consumer solutions: The Videoscape media gateway, Videoscape IP set-top box and Videscape software clients.
The goal is to unify video consumption at home – making it simple and accessible. At the heart of the system is the media gateway – it will function as a routing and multimedia device and  allow the consumer to watch Video and Web content on any connected network device (TV, PC, mobile device). TV connectivity will be done with the set-top box, and Videoscape will also support Umi – Cisco’s Home Telepresence system.
When it comes to set-top IPTV boxes, it seems that Cisco is entering quite a crowded market – However its sheer marketing power and a complete product range might just do the trick.

But what makes it differ from current offerings by competitors (Google TV for example)?
1) It’s a complete platform (Media gateway AND a TV set-top box).
2) Unlike Google, Cisco is aiming for the ISPs – and maybe, unlike Google, they are more of a pipe rather than a potential threat to the Service/Content Providers themselves.

It’s pretty obvious that the key to the success of Videscape is the business benefits it will bring the service providers – Cisco talks about targeted ads, currently not available with today’s TV broadcasts.
By placing interactive web content next to TV streams and targeting specific audience Videoscape can help bring additional benefits to the current market.
As service providers relay on the “old” TV model and traditional media advertising - Videoscape success depends somehow on the decline of the traditional TV business, and that might take some time.

It seems  that the latest batch of Cisco products are driven by a long term strategy, as the increased traffic by video products can also boost networking products  - a major market for Cisco.
Increased adoption of video-centric consumer devices will boost online traffic, Cisco estimates that Global IP traffic will quadruple from 2009 to 2014 – and Video playing a major part in it.
Videoscape joins the lines of Cisco Umi and the recently acquired Flip cameras for yet an additional move into the home-video market.
While “reinventing TV” seems like a bold statement, things does look interesting for Cisco and the IPTV market as a whole.

Update – TIP Webinar was a success – thanks for everyone who participated!
For more information about Telepresence Interoperability, check our TIP Page.

Earlier this year Cisco & Tandberg made headlines by demonstrating industry’s first immersive multi-screen Interoperability using Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP).
In September of this year, IMTC took ownership for TIP and has established a new Activity Group.
The TIP AG  is responsible for the ongoing development of the TIP specification, TIP open source project management, and related development of interoperability tests between TIP adopters.
The TIP Activity Group is co-chaired by representatives from Polycom, AT&T & Cisco and has many members from companies in IMTC today.

IMTC will host a kick off Webinar on December 8, 2010 at 10 AM EST. This webinar will be a brief glimpse into the TIP Activity group and its vision. The webinar is free and open to all.

Please pre-register and access the TIP webinar from the following Webex link: https://ciscosales.webex.com/ciscosales/onstage/g.php?d=206589063&t=a

After the kickoff the Activity Group will have periodic, online meetings to steer the development of TIP. The group will also hold occasional face to face meetings as well as participate in multi-vendor test events, such as IMTC’s SuperOp.

TIP AG is an opportunity for your organization to participate in development of Telepresence Interoperability and leverage the benefits to offer Interoperable products and services.
For more information and inquiries, please contact us via mail at tip_infor@imtc.org
Membership to TIP AG is open only to IMTC members. To become a member of the IMTC and the TIP AG, please visit http://imtc.org/membership/join.asp

TIP Webinar Agenda December 8, 2010 10:00AM EST

• 10:00 -10:10 Minutes IMTC Intro (Anatoli Levin, President IMTC)

• 10:10 -10:30 Minutes TIP Overview (David Benham, Co-Chair TIP Activity Group)

• 10:30 -10:35 Call for Membership (Louise Olson & Sumit Kumar, Co-Chairs TIP Activity Group)

• 10:35-10:45 Q&A

Home Telepresence – What’s all the fuss?
Telepresence, as stated in our “What is Telepresence” post, is all about an immersive experience. And while video-conferencing isn’t new, creating an immersive experience is rather expensive and until today was out of the reach of the home user.

A typical environment for Telepresence Solutions

As the market moves to high-definition TV displays, broadband Internet speeds and powerful computer devices – creating this experience cheaply at home finally becomes a reality.

The term “Home Telepresence” is new, and was coined de-facto by the first one to introduce a high-quality video conferencing device aimed specifically for the home user – Cisco.

Home Telepresence by Cisco

Home Telepresence Options:
Today Cisco announced its home Telepresence product - ūmi (Pronounced yoo-me). ūmi is a pan-tilt camera that sits on top of the HDTV and set-top box system that connects to the television with a HDMI cable and allows for 1080P video conferencing.
Earlier in its CES demonstration, Cisco CEO John Chambers said that Cisco approach is device agnostic -
This hints that we might see Umi connectivity to other devices in the future. Cisco will charge 599$ for the hardware and a monthly subscription fee of 24.99$.
ūmi will ship at November 11th and is available for pre-order, Verizon will be the first to offer it to FiOS customers in 2011 although pricing details are unknown yet.

If Cisco’s Home Telepresence technology is indeed device agnostic, we might turn up to see it at running on devices like the Cisco Cius and maybe even on the new BlackBerry PlayBook (which includes a front-facing camera). Cisco said it’s looking into Facetime integration as well but it’s remains to be seen if Skype interoperability, a thing many consumers might be interested in, will actually happen. It’s worth mentioning that Skype just recently appointed Cisco’s head of enterprise, commercial and SMB unit as their CEO – and are looking for ways to expand. Recent TV models by major manufactures like Samsung and Panasonic are Skype enabled and allow for a Video Calling, although not in the same quality as the Cisco Umi or corporate video-conferencing systems.

The second big announcement made today, was by Logitech -
Logitech (Which bought LifeSize, a Telepresence company back in 2009) announced its Logitech Revue.
The Revue is a 299$, multi-purpose multimedia device based on the Google TV platform.
Revue offers movies, surfing abilities, and since it’s based on the Android platform – Adobe Flash and custom applications support.
Coming from Logitech, it’s almost no-brainer that they also added a video-conferencing capability in it with the addition of a 149$ camera called Logitech TV Cam.
At 448$ Total with the Revue itself – It’s not a cheap way of home video conferencing, but it’s a living-room experience and that’s different than using a software client on a desktop computer.

Is Home Telepresence really needed?
Both Revue and Umi are somewhat of a premium form of home video-conferencing as they require two things – buying a new device (unlike, using skype on a common laptop, for example) and a high speed broadband connection – The Revue use 1mbps (both upload and download) for 720P conferencing, and the Umi use 1.5mbps for 720P and 3.5mbps for 1080P. The bandwidth requirements makes the Home Telepresence solutions quite exclusive, and the Umialso requires a subscription fee of 25$ a month in addition to that – a 300$ yearly extra over the device cost itself. Will consumers be willing to pay the extra 149$ over the base price of the Revue or the more expensive costs of the Cisco Umi?

From our experience with Telepresence – seeing is believing.
The Home Telepresence experience is undoubtedly better than using a laptop with a software client but unless people get to actually see how good it is – the adaptation rate might be slow.

Can Home Telepresence win over cheaper video-chatting solutions?
For that to happen, some sort of a glue is needed. Many look at Apple as a possible “savior”, by opening a protocol such as Facetime, thus promoting unified communication between all sort of video enabled devices – Tablets, Cellular Phones, Set-Top boxes and professional Telepresence equipment. By creating a world of products that speaks in the same language, and enabling communication withmobile devices, users might see the overall benefit of living “inside” that eco-system.

So now more than ever, it make sense to ask – Apple, where are you?