Here lies the text of a press release from the TMF, which we think is saying that the organisation is going to work with ETC@USC on the issues surrounding the distribution of digital content.
We welcome English translations of the last sentence, especially.
“TM Forum, the world’s premier industry group focused on business effectiveness for the communications and media sectors, and the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC)@USC in Hollywood have established a liaison with the goal of rapidly eliminating the barriers to new distribution revenues for content and communication services providers, it was announced today.
The liaison follows more than two years of informal cross-industry collaboration on content distribution between TM Forum and ETC@USC, who bring together the entertainment, consumer electronics, technology, and services industries to collaborate on opportunities for new consumer entertainment offerings today and into the future. Together with mutual member companies including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and TCS, the new partnership will significantly enhance the dialog and collaboration between content owners, media industry suppliers, and communications service providers. Initial joint projects plan to address content metadata and identification schemes to advance interoperability across digital distribution value chains.
According to Jim Warner, vice chairman and head of content media and advertising, TM Forum, “The liaison with ETC is a perfect fit for both parties and is related very much to our highly-successful content sector and value chains initiative. Initial work will focus on the interactions between content owners and communications providers in order to radically simplify the creation, distribution and monetization of digital media services. Aligning the major players from these two key industries not only sends a powerful message, it will eliminate much of the ‘friction’ in today’s distribution chain – driving down operating costs while improving time to market.”
KC Blake, director of business development ETC@USC said “We look forward to working with TM Forum in the effort to streamline the delivery of content across platforms. We feel that this collaboration is a valuable step in ensuring that consumers have access to their content anytime and anywhere.”
Following the announcement, over the next three months the two organizations plan to create a roadmap that spells out the specific deliverables, milestones and actions needed to achieve the shared goal of enabling seamless and profitable Digital Media services. This will include looking at digital video distribution value chains model issues, standards gaps, and solution trends in the current content metadata landscape, particularly in identification and descriptive areas and the monetization and profitability implications to both content owners and service providers.”