TelcoTV: Ericsson to debut new middleware

Vendor giant Ericsson's new IPTV middleware solution will make its U.S. market premiere at TelcoTV 2008 this week in Anaheim, Calif. The company also claims in a statement that the end-to-end solution is the first "pre-integrated with IMS and also operates across traditional networks."

The in-house development joins the existing pieces of Ericsson IPTV approach, including IPTV network infrastructure, video processing solutions and video-on-demand technologies - with interoperable third-party products from companies such as Accedo Broadband, Agama Technologies, Amino, HP, SecureMedia, Sun Microsystem, Tilgin, Verimatrix, and ZyXEL. Ericsson's new middleware, which conforms to Open TV Forum specifications, will enable any-screen, any-network content consumption, and with IMS additionally will support presence, messaging/chat, extended parental control and other features.

Though IPTV deployments thus far mostly have proceeded outside of the IMS standards reach, Ericsson's IMS integration is not surprising, given that the vendor has been among few vendors over the last few years with an aim to have IPTV supported within IMS. That strategy is looking particularly valid after the recent Global MultiService Forum interoperability tests that looked to further the case for combining IPTV and IMS.

Related articles:
The GMI 2008 event addressed many IPTV issues [1]
Ericsson talked about its IPTV middleware in September [2]
Ericsson has been touting the IMS-IPTV link since at least 2006 [3]