In This Issue
Dear Members,
We are now only weeks away from our next forum meeting which will be held in Vienna and hosted by Telekom Austria. The two day event promises to be even more challenging and rewarding than those held earlier this year in Los Angeles and Wales. Our focus in Vienna is on IPTV, which is also commanding a great deal of attention from the BSF Board of Directors.
The BSF Q3 meeting in Vienna has attracted leading industry speakers, including contributions from Philips: IPTV from a Consumer Electronics Perspective; Sony Pictures: A Content Owner Perspective of Entertainment Technology; and Exent: Best Practice Case Studies in Online Gaming.
The BSF Board has been generating further documents to help our individual and collective understanding of the IPTV space and its issues. Derek Kuhn has done a great job in creating the paper
IPTV Explained which you will find on the BSF website at
IPTV Explained.
IPTV is one of the three topic areas defined as particularly important by the membership at the Los Angeles meeting. The other two subjects for Forum focus are:
Dynamic and Interactive Services: Video and gaming; and Content on the go.
Members have been providing input on exactly what they want covered within these subject areas and the Board continues to welcome your viewpoint as our strategy and output in these areas is developed.
In the meantime, get ready for the upcoming meeting. I know that BSF Board Member and Vienna host, Helmut Leopold, of Telekom Austria, is looking forward to entertaining the membership and ensuring no-one can be accused of being a
Thin Man, or woman, at the end of the two days.
Best regards,
Andy Birchall
Broadband Services Forum, Vice Chairman - Europe
BSF Q3 Meeting
September 14-15, 2005
Vienna Austria
Hosted by Telekom Austria
Digital Hollywood
September 19-21, 2005
Lowes Santa Monica Beach Hotel, Santa Monica, California, USA
The Broadband Services Forum presents a full day conference entitled "Delilvery, Development and Dynamics of Content in a Radically Changed Communications Environment" on Tuesday, September 19, 2005. The three sessions will be presented by various BSF members. For more information, please visit
Delivery, Development and Dynamics of Content in a Radically Changed Communications Environment.
Derek Kuhn of Alcatel, BSF Board Chairman will participate in a panel on Monday, September 19, 2005 entitled "IPTV Emergence: The Broadband, Telco, Cable, Studio content & Technology Strategy".
Carriers World 2005
September 19-22, 2005
Victoria Park Plaza, London, England
Andy Birchall of On Demand Group Limited, BSF Vice Chairman, Europe, will provide the opening remarks at the Broadband Home Services day, September 22, 2005.
Broadband World Forum
October 3 - 6, 2005
Palacio Municipal de Congresas, Madrid, Spain
Derek Kuhn of Alcatel, BSF Board Chairman, will chair a panel entitled "Industry Focus Session 3: Content and Entertainment Services for the BB Network" on October 5, 2005. BSF members Mary Francia of Philips, Andy Birchall of On Demand Group Limited, and Kerensa Samanidis of Sony Home Entertainment Europe will participate on the panel.
The 2nd Annual European Connected Home Forum
October 11 - 12, 2005
Business Design Centre, London, England
Thomas Ostendorf of Siemens, BSF Board Member, will participate on the panel "Looking Forward: Visions of the Connected Home", October 11, 2005. A 10% registration discount is available to BSF Members for this event.
Telco TV
November 8 - 10, 2005
Matthew Marnik of Nortel, BSF VP of Marketing, will chair a panel on Wednesday, November 9, 2005 entitled "Maximizing your Broadcast Content".
July 2005
Broadband Services Forum publishes the first in a series of whitepapers focused on IPTV: IPTV Explained
As a result of broadband service providers moving from offering connectivity to services, the discussion surrounding broadband entertainment has increased significantly. The Broadband Services Forum (BSF) membership has identified a number of services that require significant focus in this decade; one of these is Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). This paper provides a high level, vendor-agnostic overview of what IPTV is and how it works.
CANS Update: As many of you know, we have presented the results of the interviews and TWG workings in the form of 2 standards documents at both the BSF meetings in Los Angeles and Cardiff, Wales. We are still eagerly looking for feedback or new ideas on the existing standards documents as well as looking for companies interested in chairing other parts of the standards work.
To recap, there are 4 different areas that we are seeking to address as we create a model that allows the content that is delivered by a network and the network itself to interact and transact with each other. Those areas are essentially:
- Application Resource Manager (ARM) communication with the Network Resource Manager (NRM). The draft specifications for this effort have been presented.
- ARM to back office integration - creating models to more tightly couple the content to the back-office customer profile information of the carrier.
- ARM to Content signaling. Allowing a standardized ARM to support many different application servers.
- Content Server to network signaling. Allowing the last mile state of the network to be signaled between the actual server and routers supporting it.
We have also presented our architecture to the IPSphere organization to get their input. Our model tracks very closely to the content/network signaling work that they have underway as well.
Again, we are looking for more folks to work on this effort as we begin our integration work with the DSL Forum and CableLabs. We are creating liaisons in both organizations as we begin to share our work.
Scott Stevens
Broadband Services Forum TWG Chair
The Marketing Committee has been focused on planning the BSF presence at various events taking place in the 2nd half of 2005. Notably, the BSF is organizing a mini-track of three sessions at Digital Hollywood, chairing a day at Carriers World, and presenting a panel at Broadband World Forum. We are currently in discussions with a number of event organizers in North America and Europe regarding sponsorship swaps, BSF speakers, and promotional arrangements.
The Marketing Committee has updated the BSF communications policy to include guidelines and examples for BSF web pages on member sites. We have also established a public relations subcommittee, led by Greg Owens of Alcatel and Brenda Ropoulos of net.com.
The new and improved BSF website, under construction by Starmark International, is nearing completion. We are working hard to ensure that this site is an information-rich portal for all activities related to the Forum.
The engagement of the individuals on the Marketing Committee has been at the greatest level so far--but there's still room to get involved. If you, or someone you know is interested in helping increase the visibility of the BSF, while meeting some great folks in the industry, please contact
Matthew Marnik or
Laura Nugent of AMS.
About The BSF News:
The BSF News is a for member companies of the Broadband Services Forum and other interested parties. Feel free to distribute the BSF News to colleagues who may be interested in the activities of the Forum. To subscribe or unsubscribe to The BSF News send an email to:
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