IMTC Member Companies Test Emerging 3GPP Multimedia Streaming Features at Latest Interoperability Test Event

New 3GPP “Fast Content Switching” Standard is Tested for the First Time

The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) announces that its Packet-Switched Streaming Activity Group (PSS-AG) has just completed a face-to-face interoperability test event. Ten companies participated in the event, which took place Jan. 19-23 at the San Diego headquarters of PacketVideo Corporation. The testing covered many aspects of multimedia streaming to handsets and other mobile devices, including several new and emerging standard technologies:

3GPP Fast Content Switching (FCS), which improves a mobile user’s media viewing experience by reducing the initial session setup time, and by providing “fast channel-changing” capabilities.
3GPP Rate Adaptation, which allows the bit rate of the streaming content to be adapted to match changing network conditions, thus reducing the need for “re-buffering” or other interruptions typically caused by network congestion.
NAT/Firewall Traversal and Keepalive, which is a draft IETF standard for mitigating the streaming problems often caused by NATs and Firewalls.

“The IMTC provides an ideal environment for multimedia technology companies to come together to test their implementations,” said Ralph Neff of PacketVideo Corporation, co-chair of the PSS-AG. “Companies work collaboratively to find and resolve interoperability problems in the development stage. This process promotes open standards like 3GPP Packet-Switched Streaming Services (PSS), and also provides the path by which new additions to these standards may be technically reviewed, tested, and deployed to the market faster.”

The San Diego test event provided PSS-AG member companies the first opportunity to test the new Fast Content Switching standard. The FCS techniques were introduced by 3GPP in the Release-7 PSS specification, which was finalized in early 2008. A test specification for FCS was then developed by PSS-AG member companies during the second half of 2008. After the initial FCS testing at the San Diego event, PSS-AG and 3GPP SA4 began an active liaison discussion so that information learned through PSS-AG testing of FCS may be used to validate and to improve the 3GPP specifications.

“In this event,” said Jaehwan Kim of Vidiator Technology, Inc., co-chair of the PSS-AG, “we also verified a NAT/Firewall protocol which is under development in the IETF. I feel this shows strong initiative by the group, as this protocol is not finalized yet, and has not been embraced by 3GPP. Still, we feel it can be used to solve real-world streaming problems, and the PSS-AG members have found additional benefit in the active technical discussions we have been having around this topic.”

The following companies participated in the San Diego test event: Alcatel-Lucent, Nextreaming, NXP, PacketVideo, Qualcomm, RealNetworks, Samsung, Sunplus mMobile, and Vidiator. Participation in PSS-AG test events is open to any IMTC member company. More information may be found at http://www.imtc.org/membership.

About the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC)

The IMTC is an industry-leading, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote and facilitate the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunication products and services based on open international standards. Hosting interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world, including SIP, IMS, 3G-324M, 3GPP-PSS, H.323, and other Voice over IP technologies, the consortium offers membership to any party, interested in multimedia communication, conferencing or streaming, including hardware and software vendors; academic institutions; government agencies; and non-profit organizations. The IMTC is based in San Ramon, California.

The IMTC is making Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime.

http://www.imtc.org — http://blog.imtc.org/
Contacts

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