Telecom service providers are looking to IPTV to provide much more than a me-too video service. But to fully capitalize on the ability to customize the video viewing experience and create new services not easily duplicated in the cable realm, they know they cannot afford to deploy IPTV as a stand-alone product, in the method of many existing service platforms.

So before major incumbents even deploy IPTV on a widespread commercial basis, they are working to determine how it fits into the bigger convergence picture, which includes the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture, the combination of wireless and wireline services and the integration of existing back-office systems.

To some extent, the two major technology trends — IPTV and IMS — have been chugging down separate development tracks. But there is now clear indication that they are beginning to merge as service providers recognize both the need to bring the intended strengths of IMS — rapid service creation and tear-down built on reusable functional elements and standard interfaces — to the IPTV world and the crucial role that wireline/wireless integration will play in making IPTV a unique product.

And at one major service provider, the effort has gone much farther. BellSouth has been working with Microsoft and Lucent Technologies to develop a service creation framework that ties together the capabilities of IMS with those of the Web services domain, used today for many IP service functions, and the legacy operations support system (OSS) or business support system (BSS) domain of the telcos. IPTV represents one of the first applications to which this new service creation capability may be applied.

“This is an important framework to get developed,” said Bill Smith, BellSouth chief technology officer. “As we start delivering some of the power of an IMS-based network, we have to have the architecture defined to let us use it effectively. The power of this kind of model is that it is one of the things that can truly bring applications together. Today I can lash together my IPTV capabilities with my wireless capabilities. But it is a cumbersome process for the users — they have to sign on separately to enable a wireless function, their e-mail access or a pay-per-view movie. The power is in putting the functionality in the network platform that knows me as a customer and not as a GSM handset or a PC or a set-top box.”

IPTV's involvement in this service creation framework is, to some extent, a matter of timing. This new video service is coming onto the market as IMS also is being deployed and as service providers begin to see the power of what full integration of IPTV with other capabilities could mean in terms of new services and revenues that look very distinct from what cable TV can provide.

And not everyone is convinced that it's necessary, or even a good idea, to shackle IPTV with grander ambitions just now, when AT&T is poised to become the first major incumbent with commercial deployments in the U.S.

“Most [service providers] realize that if they are serious about offering any kind of entertainment service to the TV, that this has to be their primary focus,” said Derek Kuhn, senior director of marketing and business development for Alcatel's strategic solutions development group. “Although the hype of IMS integration is interesting, in four out of five companies that I talk to, nobody is really serious about how that integrates with IPTV right now. It is the IPTV hump that they are focused on. When IMS becomes relevant, they can link into it in the future.”

What draws service providers to the idea of creating a single service creation platform even before IPTV is widely deployed is the dramatically different services that such a powerful integration of network capabilities would provide.

“Today you can deliver calling line ID to a television set, and people are doing that,” said John Marinho, corporate strategic marketing vice president for Lucent. “But you can begin to build on services like that, and, through IMS and SIP [session initiation protocol, a standard used within IMS], provide a much more enhanced user experience.”

A single service creation platform enables connectivity between services such as a wireless short message service (SMS) and a digital video service, he said.

“If Mom and Dad are at home watching CNN and their children are going to be late for dinner, they can send an SMS to the parents' cell phones, but it might not get seen,” Marinho said. “If the network knows that this family has a captive IPTV session in progress when the message comes in, then the SMS is sent to the TV screen, to tell the parents their kids are at a friend's house and will be late coming home. You can even build on that and allow the parents to launch a location-based application that lets the parents determine if the kids are geographically where they say they are. Those are the kinds of things that bridge the seamless interoperability of existing applications with a more enhanced user experience.”

Much of that enhancement is based on the network's knowledge of the individual user, on capabilities such as presence and on policy-based management of services that draws on core IMS features.

“The network is going to have the power to know when I am at home and when I am not,” BellSouth's Smith said. “When I am at home, my access point will see that I'm at home and implement my home profile, which tells the network how to deliver my calls. If I'm not at home and someone turns on the television in the den, the network knows not to present my customized user guide because I'm not at home. We can also take some of the Web portal functionality and map it over to an IPTV application so that if I have a series of cities — say four or five — that I regularly travel to, I can set things up on the Web portal to show me the weather in those cities and then map it over to IPTV. Then when I go to a weather channel, it brings up those four or five cities.”

There are also basic functions that a single service delivery platform can accomplish, such as knowing which video format to use depending on which device a customer is using to access the video service, or knowing the bandwidth limitations of a given customer's service and being able to intelligently present options for how services are delivered.

The telcos have touted IPTV as a service that can be more highly customized than digital cable and the integration of IPTV into the broader service creation platform that includes IMS adds substance to those claims.

“IPTV is really starting to morph into IP multimedia,” said Ken Couch, director of marketing for IPTV and broadband networks at Nortel. “We see a whole layer of applications stacked on top of the IP platform, and it's hard to separate the video from the Web service from the voice service from the application service. It all becomes part of one platform.”

That is, of course, easier said than done. BellSouth has been working with Microsoft and Lucent to develop what its executives have publicly called “the middle of the middle” or an abstraction layer that ties together IMS, Web Services such as Microsoft's Converged Services Framework (CSF) and the OSS/BSS systems that today control provisioning, billing and other key network works (see chart on page 10).

“We have done many prototypes with them to show the integration of IMS with IPTV or show OSS with IPTV, and we put CSF in the middle as a control layer to aggregate services,” said Michel Berger, chief technology officer of Microsoft's Communications Sector. “Once you have Web Services, it is a pretty straightforward process. But to expose your assets via Web services is what generally takes a while. To expose your OSS/BSS system in order to make that data consumable in the service environment takes a lot of time and system integration.

“But once you have done it, and you only have to do it once, it comes more rapidly. That is why the operator sees this opportunity.”

The Web services piece of IPTV is already built into Microsoft TV, Berger said, “so from that perspective it is an easier job.”

The integration process will enable applications to draw on call control, call notification, location, presence, device presence, billing, provisioning, customer support and more. It also will define open application interfaces to which application developers can write programs and enable a cost-effective approach to services that allows them to be turned up — and turned down — quickly. This short application development cycle replaces the 18-month to three-year product cycle typical today.

Today, most of the process of tying together IMS, Web Services and OSS/BSS operations is a custom integration process, Berger said.

“We have made some progress at the standards level,” he said. “We did make a presentation to the technical board of the [Telecommunications Management Forum], and now have a working group, the Next Generation OSS.”

BellSouth is now trying to “socialize” its thinking with other operators as well, Smith said.

Both equipment vendors and other operators are also already addressing the issue internally, recognizing the key role that a single service creation platform will play going forward.

Verizon's iobi convergence service, which links fixed and mobile telephony with PCs and other data devices, is one step in that direction, said Michael Weintraub, a director in the Verizon Technology unit operating out of its Waltham, Mass., laboratory facility.

“We are looking to apply a unifying converged model — the challenge is that we are in an evolution state,” Weintraub said. “We have rolled out video to a number of markets that are not IMS and not IPTV. It is IP video-on-demand. The challenge is to bring the signaling control that IMS focuses on and evolve the existing stuff forward. But a number of things have to happen for that to work — the video servers have to be modified to be IMS-compliant, and a lot of other equipment as well.

“But we have to have that as a model to work to — from an architecture view, we have to have a very good understanding of what it would be to bring the TV service into an IMS framework, and the real value there,” he said.

The majority of IPTV infrastructure is not IMS- or SIP-centric today, said Tim Doiron, marketing manager for access products at Tellabs, because it is purpose-built for video delivery.

“I do think that over time, the infrastructure does become more SIP/IMS-like and a little more of a generic application,” he said. “We've already seen some evidence of that.”

There are also existing solutions to some of the challenges a service delivery platform would address. Software exists today to enable a service provider to deliver video-on-demand (VOD), for instance, and guarantee the bandwidth for a premium service or deliver a “turbo boost” of bandwidth on demand.

Alcatel is offering its IPTV clients applications, such as SMS-to-TV connections, on platforms that can easily be IMS-compliant when IMS is deployed, Alcatel's Kuhn said.

“It can all be backed into a user-generated profile; it's all ready to do that,” he said. “We've rolled out a bunch of these things for years. They run on our own platform, and we are focused on porting all these into the MSTV platform. For us right now, the focus is on launching TV.”

PCCW of Hong Kong has the largest number of IPTV subscribers worldwide — 700,000 — and is using Juniper Networks' SDX platform to deliver that service, said Dave Boland, senior manager of next-generation solutions.

“There has been an evolution in policy server platforms in the last five years,” he said. “They were initially put in specifically to help with the provisioning of DSL subscribers, then as a good platform for Turbo buttons, then login servers for 802.11 hot spots, and good platforms for parental notification or blocking of certain URLs, or providing intrusion prevention and detection. Now they are moving into IPTV and VOD and in the future we see an IMS hook.”

Recognizing the dangers of deployment of spot applications, Integra5 created a service delivery platform designed to support multiple products that can be built as custom applications or adopted from existing apps, said Meredith Flynn-Ripley, executive vice president of marketing and sales for Integra5.

“This is a natural evolutionary space to be in, to get into the IMS world,” she said. “The architecture is very modular, and our telephony server has interfaces to SIP and Class 5 switches. It can serve as an applications server or feature server in the IMS world.

“The reality is that not a lot of these converged applications have been developed,” Flynn-Ripley added. “It is safe to say operators are just starting to get their hands around a converged application and the platform approach to converged applications is slowly making its way into their minds.”

Microsoft has more than a dozen customers for its Converged Services Framework, said Michael O'Hara, general manager of Microsoft communications sector, including AT&T, Bell Canada, BT, and France Telecom.

“We can bring to bear a number of assets that enable customers to offer applications, including MSTV, and hosted versions of our core Microsoft assets such as the Microsoft Office software and Exchange,” he said. “That can get operators up to speed, and they can see revenues coming in. The important point is the interface between the services world, the Web services world and the IMS/SIP world — that is very important for all of us.”

Microsoft's Berger thinks, however, that IPTV will create a major push for a common service delivery platform as service providers must compete on all fronts, including with Web companies such as Skype.

BellSouth's Smith sees IPTV as a natural first deployment of a converged platform because “it stresses the network in different ways from what we have traditionally done, so it is a great test case for how these frameworks will work.”

Bellsouth is focused on the first step — developing that software framework, Smith said. “It's always difficult for a large number of people to start with a blank piece of paper,” he said. “We're trying to get the process started.”

The reference architecture is the key thing, said Lucent's Marinho.

“What we really do is focus on coming up with the reference architecture that includes IPTV and the middleware and how does it use things like SIP, existing IP protocols and how does that interact with the core of the IMS infrastructure.” he said. “It's a fair amount of work — but it's not like inventing the transistor.”