TelcoTV: MetaSwitch, Minerva team on IPTV apps

ATLANTA--Middleware maker Minerva and softswitch/applications vendor MetaSwitch have teamed up to demonstrate rapid delivery of new applications over an IPTV platform, using existing IP tools.

The demonstration, here at the Telco TV show, showed an easy-to-use contacts list on the TV screen and a click-to-call feature that first rings the caller’s phone and then the phone of the person being called. The impressive part, however, was that the demo was developed in less than four weeks by a single MetaSwitch developer using the Minerva tool kit for the first time, said Doug Kreitz, director of business development for MetaSwitch.

After selecting “Contacts” from a pulldown menu, a consumer can scroll through contacts, choose a home, mobile or business phone, and then push a button on the remote control to dial.

“This is all XML-based – just deployed on another user interface,” Kreitz said. The demo leveraged the MetaSwitch CommPortal, a customizable subscriber interface, and Minerva’s iTVManager, he said. Adding other call control features from CommPortal, such as directing inbound calls to other phones or voice mail, getting visual voicemail on the television and many other features are also deliverable via IPTV to the TV screen, just as they are to a PC, or a mobile device with a screen.

By adding the MetaSwitch applications to its platform, Minerva can offer its middleware customers additional functionality to sell to consumers.

Although the demo is a proof-of-concept, it would be possible to go to commercial service as early as the first half of 2008, Kreitz said.