Ericsson has announced that it has signed an agreement with Portuguese triple play operator Sonaecom to provide and integrate its open, standards-based, end-to-end IPTV solution. It includes Ericsson's new IMS-based IPTV middleware and enables the operator to deliver personalized and interactive TV experiences to its subscribers.

Under the Prime Integrator agreement, Ericsson will upgrade Sonaecom's IPTV system by delivering and integrating a next-generation, end-to-end IPTV solution. This will bring together Ericsson solutions including its new IMS-based IPTV middleware and network infrastructure, as well as Tandberg Television's high-definition and standard-definition video processing platform. Deployment and trial has started.

Ericsson's IPTV Middleware is the world's first solution to be pre-integrated with IMS. Its flexibility and scalability will enable Sonaecom to quickly create, test and deploy differentiated TV services in order to provide an individual entertainment and communication package for consumers that includes interactive and mobile functionality. The Ericsson IPTV ecosystem is based on open standards, designed to comply with the Open IPTV Forum specifications.

José Pinto Correia, CTO, at Sonaecom, says: "Ericsson's complete solution will help us achieve our IPTV vision of bringing our customers personalized and interactive multimedia services, and provides us with the integration skills we need to deliver to consumers an individualized TV experience across multiple networks."

Jan Wäreby, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Unit Multimedia, Ericsson, says: "Creating the individual TV experience requires a combination of skills taken from the world of telecoms and television. This experience must reach wider than just television, further than just mobile, and beyond the limits of fixed-line networks. Helping operators to address this is central to Ericsson's TV solutions offering. This new IPTV ecosystem is transforming the worlds of communications and entertainment to deliver an open, carrier-class TV solution that drives the future of truly converged and blended services."

Hans-Erhard Reiter, President of Ericsson Portugal, says: "The strong combination of Ericsson's IPTV offering, systems integration capabilities and local personnel will provide Sonaecom with a scalable, robust, end-to-end IMS-based solution to build its television business and offer advanced, revenue-generating services to its customers."

Discretix, a provider of embedded security and DRM (Digital Rights Management) solutions, and castLabs, a mobile broadcasting technologies and services company, have announced a technology partnership with mobile broadcasting technologies. The partnership brings together two technologies of the fast-growing mobile TV segment-Discretix' Multi-Scheme MobileTV Security Client and castLabs' OMA BCAST Service Delivery Platform-creating a client/server mobile TV solution built upon OMA BCAST standards.

castLabs' carrier-grade OMA BCAST Service Delivery Platform is a head-end product for use by mobile TV operators. The server-side platform includes key features such as Electronic Service Guide (ESG) management, offer management and Conditional Access (CA); it also supports convergent TV services using Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS), 3G streaming and IPTV.

Like castLabs' platform, Discretix' Multi-Scheme MobileTV Security Client supports OMA BCAST DRM Profile, Smart Card Profile and DVB-H IPDC 18Crypt. The Discretix client secures the distribution and consumption of mobile TV broadcasts over a wide range of mobile devices, all with complete user transparency and no degradation in broadcast performance or playback time.

"The combination of castLabs' and Discretix' products removes implementation risk and reduces time-to-market for handset OEMs and service providers," said Edo Ganot, Executive Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Discretix. 

"This strategic partnership enables mobile network operators to deploy a ready-made solution with broadest possible device support, highest levels of flexibility and assured performance", said Michael Stattmann, Managing Director of castLabs. "Discretix´ Multi-scheme clients and castLabs´ Service Delivery Platforms are setting the standard for Mobile TV security and DRM in the international market of today."

On2 Technologies, a specialist in video compression solutions, has announced the launch of its latest video compression format, On2 VP8. This eighth generation of On2 video is claimed to be the perfect solution for web TV, IPTV and video conferencing companies looking to differentiate their product and service offerings by delivering higher quality video using less data and requiring less system resource for playback.

Downloading and streaming HD movies and TV shows has become commonplace, and with affordable HD web cams, we will see rapid growth in high-resolution user-generated content as well as the wide-scale adoption of high quality video communication solutions .

Even with faster transport technologies on the way, the cost and availability of bandwidth will remain a stubborn obstacle to containing costs as video services use more bandwidth than any other IP application. According to a recent white paper published by Cisco, annual IP traffic will exceed half a zettabyte by 2012, with video accounting for close to 90% of all consumer traffic. Internet video alone is expected to generate 10 exabytes of data per month in 2012.

"Next generation video must transcend platforms while remaining fast and affordable," said Eero Kaikkonen, Chief Marketing Officer at On2. "We design On2 video formats to achieve those goals. On2 VP8 achieves significant improvements over leading standards-based implementations and is less compute-intensive to encode and play back. Furthermore, we have used our years of experience developing embedded video IP to ensure the design is entirely suited for optimization to current and future desktop and mobile processor cores."

On2 VP8 is claimed to surpass the compression efficiency and performance of every other video format on the market by employing over 40 technical innovations, among them:

• Advanced prediction through constructed reference frames
  Macroblock row level threading
  Improved small area referential encoding
  Advanced contextual entropy coding without the added complexity of
  bit level adaptability
  Sparse targeted adaptive loop filtering

"With On2 VP8, we set out to increase compression performance over On2 VP7 and leading H.264 implementations by 20% while reducing playback complexity by 40%," said Paul Wilkins, Chief Technology Officer at On2. "In the end we exceeded these goals and even back-ported some of what we learned to our On2 VP6 for Adobe Flash encoders."

On2 VP8 bitstream requires fewer processing cycles to decode, so users do not need to have the latest and greatest PC or mobile device to enjoy On2 VP8 video quality.

"Through our relationship with On2 over the years, Move Networks has enabled viewers to realize the highest quality Internet television experience possible.  We look forward to On2's continued innovations," said John Edwards, CEO of Move Networks.

Multicore processing is one of the most significant developments in computer technology. On2 VP8 is designed to take full advantage of multi-core systems and can efficiently use up to 64 processor cores simultaneously.

"As new multi core processors come to market, On2 Video will be able to make maximum use of the additional computing power available, " said Wilkins "Our innovative encoder can seamlessly use additional cores to either increase compression speed or to improve compression quality in real-time applications."

On2 has worked closely with ARM to ensure suitability for porting to current and future ARM single and multi-core processors in mobile devices.

"We have been working with On2 to ensure that their compression schemes work as optimally as possible with our NEON 64/128-bit SIMD technology which enables high definition video in software. NEON technology is a key feature in our current Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 MPCore processors and will be included in all future ARM application processors," said Laurence Bryant Mobile Segment Marketing Manager, ARM "The high compression performance of this latest generation of On2 Video suggests that it will be ideal for wireless internet applications where available data bandwidth is a premium, and complements our recent work with Adobe on the Open Screen Project to drive consistent internet experiences across multiple screens, including TVs, PCs, mobile devices and consumer electronics."

"JavaFX enables content authors and developers to quickly and easily deliver high-impact, rich internet applications across mobile phones, desktops, TVs and other consumer devices," said Param Singh, senior director of JavaFX marketing at Sun Microsystems."JavaFX leverages the best capabilities of the existing Java platform along with new immersive media capabilities and we are pleased to be working with On2, a world leader in video compression technology. The combination of On2 video and JavaFX will provide the high-fidelity video capabilities to supercharge the consumer experience across the billions of devices around the world that are powered by Java technology."

On2's VP6 format became the de facto standard for web video following its integration in Adobe Flash Player in 2005. On2 expects VP8 to complement its existing formats and, in particular, is fully committed to continuing the development of VP6 to further improve encoding and playback performance.

"We are serving different needs with On2 VP6 and VP8," said Kaikkonen. "On2 VP6 offers distinct advantages for web video as the Adobe Flash Player is installed on nearly every desktop in the world. It offers comparable quality to H.264 with the added value of supporting cue points and alpha channel masking, allowing developers to quickly and easily create more interactive and complete web video experiences with minimal investment.  On2 VP8 will be our flagship format and enable companies developing client-side playback capability to deliver a supreme video-over-IP solution."

On2 video is proprietary to On2 Technologies and is available with patent-pool free licensing.

castLabs, a mobile broadcasting technologies and services company, today announced that it is the first ever provider of an OMA BCAST platform which supports all currently available DVB-H enabled mobile phones. It is claimed to be the first platform which has been successfully tested with all marketed DVB-H handsets. The platform is based on the open OMA BCAST (Open Mobile Alliance Mobile Broadcast Services Enabler Suite) standard, but is also compatible with IP Datacasting (IPDC) and all other proprietary standards used by current mobile phones.

castLabs´ mobile TV service delivery platform enables network operators to provide customers with a broad range of interactive mobile TV and IPTV services with multivendor capabilities.

The platform has already been deployed as a central headend component of the nationwide DVB-H broadcasting network in Austria for MEDIA BROADCAST, which has supplied all EURO 2008 venues and enabled the majority of the Austrian population to receive fifteen domestic and international TV programs and five Austrian radio programs in digital quality on mobile devices.

Mobile TV applications hold great promise as the next blockbuster application for the wireless industry; however with different broadcasting standards used around the world, a technology able to support all available devices is a major cornerstone towards commercial success in mobile TV. According to industry forecasts, approximately 462 million people will view mobile TV by 2012 worldwide.

 "We are proud to be the world's first provider of an OMA BCAST solution which supports all available DVB-H handsets regardless of vendor-specific properties," commented Michael Stattmann, Managing Director of castLabs.

Ericsson and Dutch mobile network operator KPN have signed a contract for hosted mobile advertising, marking Ericsson's first contract for hosted mobile advertising.  

Under the agreement, Ericsson will provide KPN with an innovative and flexible end-to-end business solution for managing and delivering targeted advertisements to be displayed on mobile phones and other devices.   The hosted service enables KPN to deliver targeted advertisements based on consumer preferences to individual network users via mobile internet pages and various messaging services. The advertisements can be targeted based on each user's personal preferences. Advertising agencies can create and maintain advertisement campaigns through reporting tools.  

KPN has piloted mobile advertising services with major advertisers and is currently testing them further. The company is committed to working out opt-in programs for customers in accordance with legal requirements, and is researching appropriate incentive programs. In May 2008 KPN commercially launched the first mobile advertising services.  

Patrick Kuijsters, marketing director KPN Mobile, says: "KPN is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Ericsson. Ericsson' platform suits KPN's need to add relevant advertisements to operator services to end users, in which opt-in plays a crucial role. KPN's vision is to reduce waste of advertisers' media spending and to deliver relevant offers to its consumers based on their desires. Ericsson is a crucial partner in realising this vision, and is willing to help KPN shape this developing market."  

Mobile advertising is a developing medium that supports new business models with promising forecasts. Mobile devices, as the most personal medium, provide opportunities for these new business models.  

Nils de Baar, President, Ericsson in the Netherlands, says: "Hosting is a growing segment within Ericsson and we are pleased to collaborate in exploring new possibilities in the multimedia environment. This underlines both our strengths as the leader in telecom services and our commitment to become a leader in multimedia."

Mobile TV industry players Quantum and Siano announced today at IBC Amsterdam the launch of a new convergence media device developed by Quantum incorporating Siano's DVB-H front-end technology. Siano's DVB-H silicon receiver chips together with the SMS8021 internal chip antenna have been integrated into the Personal TV Media Player by Quantum, becoming the first connected PMP in the world featuring OSF IPDC and OMA BCAST personal mobile TV and GPS navigation. 

Siano will be demonstrating the new Quantum device at this week's IBC conference in Amsterdam, at Siano booth 592 in the mobile zone.

Selected Quantum partners will provide their media mobility experience through the new VideoTouch (Motorola: booth 1.D31; Alcatel Lucent: booth 12P,C20; Nagravision: booth 1.D69; Irdeto:  booth 1.D51; NDS: booth 1.A71).

The move introduces a new realm in portable entertainment, introducing high quality live mobile TV broadcasting of up to 30 channels onto a GPS enabled device offering navigation, personal assistance and location based-services . The end-user can enjoy high performance mobile digital TV entertainment whilst having in-car assistance, traffic and weather updates, movies, an MP3 player, and picture viewing – all on a touch-screen interface.

Based on Siano's leading DVB-H silicon and additional SMS8021 chip antenna, Quantum's Personal TV Media Player convergence device offers unparalleled DVB-H reception, in both indoor and outdoor locations, in rural areas, and mobility performance that will support mobile TV whilst travelling on high speed trains or vehicles, eliminating the need for external antennae.

"We are delighted to work with Siano in bringing live DVB-H broadcast capabilities to our new Personal TV Media Player," said Stefano Martini CEO of  Quantum. "Our latest device represents a breakthrough in consumer technology – until now high-quality DVB-H Pay TV has been the missing element in providing the ultimate multi-media rich mobile experience. With Siano's proven track record in DVB-H and elimination of the need for external antennae – they were the obvious choice."

Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano, added, "As the demands of mobile entertainment grow, converged multi-media devices are merging entertainment, navigation and mobile TV to provide consumers with the ultimate experience.  The debut of Quantum's personal media player meets these ‘all in one' demands and we are thrilled to be the selected as the mobile TV chip vendor of choice."  

Mobile Content Networks, a provider of mobile search management and search revenue solutions, today announced that its mobile content merchandising program, allwords, is launching globally following its success in Japan.

Initial allwords distribution partners will include Thailand's AIS, DTAC, and TrueMove, Avea of Turkey, Scandinavia's Tele2, and myGamma.com, BuzzCity's fast growing mobile social network. MCN also confirmed that it will launch allwords in the U.S. as part of a commercial trial it is conducting with a leading mobile operator.

"With more than 25 operator and portal partners in eight countries, MCN is uniquely positioned to understand and lead trends in mobile content discovery and promotion," said MCN CEO Marc Bookman "In Japan we've proven that MCN-powered Search Merchandising solutions provide the fastest, most profitable connections between mobile users and digital content and commerce items they can consume via their phones and now we are taking the allwords(sm) value proposition global."

In 2007 allwords was launched by MCN in Japan as an outgrowth of its mobile search applications on NTT DoCoMo's iMode portal and with Yahoo! Mobile Japan.  allwords enables mobile content providers to purchase all keywords in popular vertical content categories, such as music, images, games and shopping – to bring mobile users directly to the content item – not a link or a page -that they can click on and purchase. Mobile content providers and their agencies directly manage advertising budgets and content category promotions, measure user response directly, and adapt quickly to changes in user interests to maximize sales.

"Mobile operators and portals, and the content providers who depend on them, are constantly searching for the most direct, cost-effective, and profitable way to promote digital content discovery and transactions," said leading mobile advertising industry analyst Chetan Sharma, president, Chetan Sharma and Associates. "With allwords I think they've found it. allwords looks like a win-win, generating new revenue for operators and higher conversions for content providers."

"allwords is the highest performing mobile content promotion program in Japan." said Mr. Hirotaka Fukuoka, Senior Vice President of Opt, one of Japan's leading interactive advertising firms and an MCN allwords sales partner. "Content providers are getting higher click-throughs and conversions and a significantly better cost of acquisition with allwords than with any other paid search or advertising program, and we are adding new partners weekly as they continue to shift marketing spend to the direct value that allwords delivers."

MobiTV, a provider of managed TV and video content over mobile and broadband networks, today announced the immediate availability of its standards-based Optimized Delivery Server (ODS) in Europe. MobiTV's ODS system is claimed to provide a scalable, secure and optimised method for the distribution of enhanced live, clip-linear, VOD and downloadable media over broadband and wireless networks. ODS is available for licensing to partners and customers across Europe looking for systems that will deliver high-quality video and rich media over existing wireless and broadband network ecosystems.

Currently over four million mobile subscribers worldwide access programmes via MobiTV's managed network platform that delivers live television, video on demand and digital music services. The availability of ODS comes at a time when consumer demand for access to wireless video and TV services is growing substantially. The analyst house Strategy Analytics, has reported that the global media market will double between 2008 and 2011 from $32 billion to more than $64 billion. This growth has been attributed to the increase in global service provider video offerings.

"Our Optimized Delivery Server technology represents decades of best practices coming into focus around issues including bandwidth adaptability, full redundancy and carrier-grade reliability," said Anders Norström, European Managing Director, MobiTV. "A primary component of the end-to-end managed hosted solution offered to MobiTV customers in North America, ODS technology can now be licensed by third parties in Europe, delivering the advantages of high quality video and user experience across varying network conditions through advanced network optimisation, and efficient, effective service creation."

MobiTV's standards-based Optimized Delivery Server is RTP/RTSP and 3GPP standard compliant, and combines unicast and multicast distribution methods, creating a single delivery platform that improves video quality and decreases backhaul demands. The technology optimizes network resources by creating a distributed network, and includes comprehensive usage reporting, fully redundant architecture and support for all types of devices.

By utilising bandwidth smoothing, seamless network handover and bandwidth adaptation that includes stream switching, stream thinning and rate shaping, MobiTV's Optimized Delivery Server also enables significant improvements channel change and session start-up capabilities.

For licensees based in Europe, the Optimized Delivery Server system can grow with the needs of customers' businesses. Partners and customers can start with a single cluster in a data centre and then deploy additional clusters at the network edges as their business needs demand. Providing low latency and secure media distribution through a scalable architecture, ODS also enables an interactivity layer that includes compelling, targeted advertising insertions and personalisation options.

Novarra, the Internet Mobility company, has today announced an extension
of its partnership with Yahoo! to provide its Vision web solution for
Yahoo! oneSearch. As part of the agreement, the companies deployed Novarra's Vision v7.3 platform that includes customized mobile content handling capabilities.

When consumers click on a Web link from Yahoo!'s oneSearch results,
Novarra's Vision platform is said to transform the PC content for a fast and optimal
mobile experience. Complex Web sites around the globe are automatically
optimized for thousands of unique mobile devices, says Novarra.

"Yahoo! is committed to providing the best user experience to consumers
on their mobile phones," said Steve Boom, senior vice president, Connected
Life, Yahoo! "Partnering with Novarra provides us with an effective Web
transformation solution to render Web content for mobile handsets."

"We're pleased that Yahoo! chose Novarra to adapt content with speed and
simplicity, which is critical for effective presentation," said Bruce
Simpson, chief operating officer for Novarra. "All our customers have
experienced consumer satisfaction and steady growth, enabling operators and
Internet brands to generate significant revenues."

SafeNet, a global specialist in information security, has announced the addition of SafeBSF, a carrier-grade Generic Bootstraping Architecture (GBA) solution for mobile user authentication to its industry-leading portfolio of Mobile TV Protection and DRM solutions. SafeBSF provides mobile operators and service providers with a general-purpose authentication infrastructure, which can be used for multiple services such as mobile TV and mobile payments.
 
SafeBSF performs mutual authentication of the operator network and consumers-via their SIM card-who may be accessing a multimedia application, including mobile TV, during service access initiation using the GBA standard from the 3GPP. The SafeBSF solution is a complete bundle of GBA components, including a BSF, HSS/HLR Proxy, and a Zn proxy. By using SafeBSF, mobile operators and service providers can be confident that only authenticated users with access rights to their mobile services are able to access the content.
 
"When securely deployed and managed, services such as Mobile TV and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) present mobile operators and service providers with a tremendous opportunity to grow revenue by significantly increasing average spend per subscriber," said Vikrant Gandhi of Frost & Sullivan. "SafeNet has long been a strong provider in the DRM space and with the addition of SafeBSF to their Mobile TV Protection portfolio they have once again demonstrated their ability to address important market trends and deliver complete security solutions for the protection, management, and monetisation of next-generation digital content, features, and services."

SafeBSF can plug directly into an existing HLR (or provide a stand-alone HSS), thereby allowing mobile network operators to enhance their existing authentication infrastructure. This significantly reduces development cost and time to market.
 
"Increased demand for next-generation features and services such as mobile TV and mobile payments has forced mobile operators and service providers to prioritise user and device authentication to ensure the privacy, integrity, and confidentiality of sensitive data and valuable content," said Dr. Simon Blake-Wilson, managing director, embedded security solutions, SafeNet. "With the addition of SafeBSF, SafeNet offers customers the industry's only complete, end-to-end Mobile TV Protection Solution which address rights management and authentication challenges while reducing development costs and shortening time to market."