TM Forum Continues Push into Cable Industry with a Call to the Industry

London, UK – IP Cable Show, March 11, 2008 – The TM Forum, the world’s leading industry trade association focused on transforming business processes, operations and systems for managing and monetizing on-line Information, Communications and Entertainment services, announced today that its Cable Interest Group has organized an industry call on Interactive and addressable advertising. The potential growth of new forms of advertising is seen widely in the industry as the key revenue opportunity to address in 2008, however standardization is required to unlock its full potential.

The Cable Interest Group (CIG) is a committee of global MSOs, within the TM Forum that coordinate requirements for the management of new and existing services for Cable companies and is based on the work of IPDR, now part of the TM Forum collaboration program. With most MSOs now offering full communications services, the relevance of TM Forum’s work, such as the business process framework (eTOM), is increasingly being seen as central to their systems architectures. However, new services are driving new requirements, such as Interactive and addressable advertising, and industry consensus is needed.

The TM Forum is promoting their push into the cable industry at a range of industry events. The first of these initiatives is at the IP Cable and the Interactive Advertising Shows, co-located with the IPTV World Forum March 12 – 14th in London, where Cable Sector head Kelly Neiman will be speaking. The second is at the 2008 Cable Congress Show in Madrid April 23-25th, where the TM Forum is initiating a European and US cable industry session to standardize the capturing, distribution, and management of data for use in cable advertising services. This industry meeting will take place in two parts in the “Technical track” on April 25th at 12 noon and 2:15pm.

“The Cable industry is moving very fast,” states Kelly Neiman. “With all IP networks starting to have the ability to offer many of the same services as traditional cable networks, it has never been more important to build new revenue streams. To do this successfully, at the right price level and with industry support, a standardization of approach is essential. The TM Forum has as vital part to play to ensure this takes place.”

About the TM Forum
With over 660 members in 65 countries, the TM Forum is the world’s leading trade association focused on management of information, communications and entertainment services. The Forum provides leadership, strategic guidance and practical solutions to improve the way that services are created, delivered, assured and charged. Members include the majority of the world’s service providers, network operators, software suppliers, equipment suppliers and systems integrators.

The Forum currently facilitates over 80 technical programs and provides extensive training, conferencing and information services to its members. Through its initiatives to help providers move to 21st century ‘lean’ processes, the Forum helps its members automate business processes by deploying operational systems that will work seamlessly across various parts of the service delivery chain. The organization provides industry benchmarks, guidebooks, process and software frameworks and specific ‘plug and play’ standards. These give service providers the direction and specific roadmaps to achieve much greater business efficiency and operational flexibility.

For further information regarding the TM Forum, related programs such as the Prosspero initiative and its Management World conferences, please visit www.tmforum.org