IMTC Telepresence Activity Group is the activity group who’s goal is to achieve Telepresence interoperability – The Telepresence AG research will help the IETF standardize the field.

We have asked the AG chairs – Allyn Romanow and Stephen Botzko to explain us about their work at the Telepresence activity group:

What is the telepresence activity group?

The purpose of the TP AG is to consider topics that help Telepresence interoperability. Telepresence is a wonderful being-there experience, but alas, systems from different vendors don’t easily interwork, limiting the potential ubiquitous growth of Telepresence. The AG focus on how to solve interoperability issues.

What does your activity group offer to companies in the telepresence field?

The AG offers companies the opportunity to collaborate closely with other vendors in creating a truly easy-to-use and widespread telepresence experience.

What is the role of the group chairmen?

The chairs of the TP AG help to organize the work of the group, including facilitating phone meetings and face-to-face meetings and maintaining a website.

What are the group greatest achievements to date?

The original goal of the group was to tackle the largest outstanding gap in standardization of telepresence – a standard way of describing multiple media streams. To this end, our goal was to introduce this issue into a standards organization. We have achieved this goal in a very timely fashion the IETF is chartering a working group to standardize the treatment of multiple streams in telepresence systems.

In addition, the ITU has started a Telepresence group to work on a wide range of important interoperability issues

The TP AG was extremely effective in describing the work that needs to be done for standardizing multiple streams, and produced a first draft charter for the IETF and a first draft Use Case document for the IETF.

What are the major goals for 2010/2011?

We intend to fully support, participate,and promote the standardization activities in both the ITU-T and the IETF.  This will require the active participation of the AG members in these bodies.  One goal is to ensure that these standards are architected to meet our industry’s present and future need for interoperability in this rapidly growing product area.  Another goal  is that these standards be developed quickly and broadly adopted.

As these standards become more well-defined (late in 2011), the AG will address interoperability testing.

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Allyn Romanow from Cisco‘s TSBU (Telepresence Systems Business Unit) talked about the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol at the IMTC SuperOp 2010 Workshop. This is his presentation:

Stephen Botzko (Polycom) presented an overview of the IMTC Telepresence Activity Group.
You can view his presentation here (Quicktime required, Flash version will be uploaded shortly).
Updated – flash version for web-viewing is here:

IMTC promotes industry standards and interoperability to help shape the future of multimedia telecommunications technology.
Inside IMTC panel explain a bit about IMTC itself and it’s value to the telecom industy.

So the time is finally on. Long-planned and even postponed (thanks to the Iceland volcano with the unpronounceable name), IMTC SuperOp! 2010 is taking place in a small town of Jesi, near Ancona in Italy, June 14-18. Big Thank You to our hosts RADVISION Italy, Aethra.Net and Telecom Italia, as well as our sponsors Tandberg, Polycom, Cisco and Vidyo!

What is behind the name “SuperOp”, which sounds both big and cryptic at the same time? SuperOp!, a.k.a. “major interoperability event” is an annual gathering of IMTC member companies, getting together to conduct interoperability testing of IP Multimedia Communications solutions over one big network setting. Our First SuperOp!, took place in 1997, and then continued annually. SuperOp!’s goal is to help engineers to advance the level of interoperability of their companies’ products. Latest and greatest solutions, quite often include simply unreleased [yet] versions of software and hardware, that are tested for interoperability with each other. One can truly look at the SuperOp! as a giant development lab, where experts from the competing (sic!) companies work together to improve their products.

Is SuperOp! still relevant? It seems that interoperability is a key word, coming from every corner of the communications industry. From newly formed alliance, UCIF, which promises to focus on interoperability of unified communications, to the just announced Apple’s iPhone 4, which will provide video communications based on open standards, interoperability is a key topic for the whole industry. And interoperability is the major area where IMTC made the difference from day one – iNow profile and H.323 Forum Certification Program, numerous improvements in mobile video streaming standards and technologies, adapted by 3GPP, 3G-324M interoperability testing plans used by GCF as a foundation for certification program for mobile video telephony, MONA standardization in ITU-T, SIP Parity (video control enhancements over SIP)  definitions which are now making it into IETF, and latest efforts in the GSMA VoLTE and Telepresence multi-streaming and TIP – these are IMTC contributions into making technologies better in the practical hands-on terms.

So what will be happening at the SuperOp! 2010? First of all, there will be a lot of interoperability testing done in all of the Activity Groups – video conferencing using both SIP and H.323 (thanks to the year long hard work of the SIP Parity activity group, SIP-based video communication is becoming a reality), IP video streaming in PSS Activity Group, mobile video conferencing using 3G-324M. Then there will be a traditional SuperConnect – all-participants with all the video conferencing devices, always done on the last day of the event. In addition to this traditional activities, this year IMTC will also conduct Telepresence Workshop, where industry leaders from Cisco, Polycom, Vidyo, AT&T and others will present current state of affairs in the Telepresence Interoperability and lay out the plans to make Telepresence ubiquitously interoperable (audience poll: who thinks it is achievable, raise your hands J). All in all, we are looking at a busy week, a lot of work and a lot of fun! IMTC is open for every company interested in improving interoperability of their products (and enjoying the process at the same time!), so … c’mon over!

While video conferencing has started from the ground up as an interoperable solution, telepresence hasn’t. The high end of the high end visual communication systems just don’t play well with the rest of the industry – different products from different vendors can’t really communicate with each other. For a highly expensive system, this limitation of interoperability isn’t a simple one. But now times are changing, and two recent announcements are making it clear that telepresence is becoming interoperable at long last:

1. Cisco, the company pushing telepresence the most, recently released their Telepresence Interoperability Protocol – TIP. Hopefully, this will soon get standardized in the ITU or some other organization.

2. The IMTC just started a new activity group for telepresence.

The focus of these initiatives is making sure that the use of telepresence with multiple monitors (the standard practice these days) will actually work when it comes to interoperability. It requires dialing out calls, coupling media streams and being able to explain and understand the layout of remote room systems and the number of codecs/seats/monitors they have.

So here’s my TIP:

· If you’re interested in telepresence, make sure to join the IMTC’s new activity group.

· If you want to know how telepresence might look in the future – start reading science fiction books.