Standards for a non-standard world?

For a few years before coming to Telephony, I worked in the "cable world." The quotes are meant more to designate that I wasn't really a full-fledged member of the cable clan. I was more like the weird uncle who shows up at family reunions to tell you why the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Most of my time was spent talking to the early pioneering executives who were trying to get the cable operators into the "voice world."

Most of those men (there were virtually no women) found their way back to the telco environment or simply exited the industry altogether when cable operators figured out that a circuit switch couldn't be had for less than a few million bucks. The experience, however, gave a good insight into how standards are viewed in cable.

Like healthy diets, they're nice to have, but no one's going to arrest you if you don't follow them. Most of the earliest cable modem deployments were "non-standard" and worked just fine. And even now, not every cable operator is adhering to DOCSIS requirements.

In the telco world, of course, standards are everything. NEBS compliance is a bare minimum for virtually anything in the CO, and OSMINE is required by many of the largest operators. But does the industry really need an IPTV standard?

The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) recently set about creating an IPTV standard with the launch of its own interoperability forum. The purpose, like most things ATIS does, is to build a consensus among vendors and carriers over how the technoloy will be rolled out in a "standard" fashion. While the objective is certainly commendable, the current environment in which carriers are entering video markets would appear to dictate that they can't wait for committees to form, recommendations to be made (and voted on), and vendors to adjust.

The video market is changing so fast, and the consumer electronics industry is starting to have a major impact, that doing things in a "standard" fashion seems almost antiquated by comparison.

E-mail me at vvittore@primediabusiness.com.