Cisco announces comprehensive IPTV strategy for Asia-Pacific

Cisco has announced its strategy to help service providers in Asia Pacific deliver an end-to-end Internet Protocol television (IPTV) solution. The solution, which delivers high quality video with optimal service reliability, will be demonstrated at its booth at the IPTV World Forum Asia 2007. Cisco is the Diamond Sponsor of IPTV World Forum Asia 2007, which runs Dec. 5-7 in Singapore.

Cisco is seeing strong momentum for its IPTV solutions. Among its recent customers are Deutsche Telecom, FastWeb, Free, SES Americom, T-Com Montenegro, T-HT Croatia and Lithuanian provider TEO.

Cisco's IPTV solutions deliver the three key building blocks that providers need to enable enhanced video experiences for consumers: defining the IPTV experience, preserving the IPTV experience, and realizing the IPTV experience.

Defining the IPTV experience: First, service providers have to define the experience that differentiates them from competitors. The basic video experience encompasses many dimensions, including standard and high-definition content, stunning picture quality in spite of any access-bandwidth limitations, and a choice of compression techniques. The experience is also defined by a variety of next-generation video services like interactivity, time-shifted video, video on demand (VoD), network-based personal video recording (nPVR), and targeted ad insertion. Cisco offers highly scalable headend and content delivery systems to define the IPTV experience.

Preserve the IPTV experience: The next step is to preserve the video experience as video traffic is transported across IP infrastructure. Service providers need a carrier-class IP network that can effectively preserve the video content and experience all the way from the headend to the consumer device and deliver it to the subscribers exactly as intended. Cisco's IP-based Next Generation Network (IP-NGN) infrastructure solution is intelligent and video aware to preserve the consumer IPTV experience. Some of the technologies needed to preserve the experience are deterministic quality of service (QoS), video admission control, video error repair, faster channel change time, enhanced multicast, and fast convergence in case of failure.

Realize the IPTV experience: An outstanding video experience requires excellent solutions in the customer home to decode, decrypt, share and display the content the way it was intended. The home networks and consumer devices are the consumer's gateway not only to video content but also to integrated media experiences. Cisco's IP-STB and connected home products are the foundation to realize the IPTV experience.