TelcoTV: NSN unveils open IPTV platform

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Nokia Siemens Networks today unveiled its new approach to the IPTV market, an open platform designed to attract third-party applications developers to bring innovation to market and to enable NSN to focus on improving its IPTV middleware, initially developed by Myrio, which NSN acquired.

“If you look at IPTV deployment globally, no one is hitting it out of the park,” said Brook Longdon, director of technical sales at NSN. “There are pockets who have scaled. We think that’s because everyone does it like we do – a fixed client and a fixed server. We have solved that problem with an open platform. The world’s appetite for applications is greater than anyone’s appetite to provide them.”

The new NSN software release, Home Entertainment Release 3.0, allows extensive user interface customization as well as flexible third-party application integration and tools for management and verification processing. Unlike Microsoft, which licenses a software developers’ kit so that third-party developers can write apps for its Mediaroom IPTV system, NSN is offering the open platform for free to developers, Longdon said. The system has ready-to-use building blocks and builds on Web 2.0-type applications that can be quickly integrated into the IPTV system.

The new system was developed for Belgacom, which is using the platform currently, and then rolled into the next software release for general availability in the first quarter of 2009. Belgacom has already created new applications such as online voting and betting and mosaic for browsing TV shows, Longdon said. There are five US companies among the early adopters as well, he said.

“We take responsibility for the platform, for PVR [personal video recording], for channel change, etc.,” Longdon said. “But anyone with experience in Java and HTML can write applications for this platform. That lets us focus on providing the best platform and the integration capabilities.”

NSN is hoping to both attract new IPTV players and existing IPTV operators unhappy with their current middleware and to retain previous Myrio customers who have been disenchanted with PVR and high-definition capabilities of the first-generation Myrio middleware.

“We think the killer app of IPTV is the ability to produce applications quickly, and that is based on my ability to provide that through tools,” Longdon said. “Service providers can now produce apps themselves or use third parties.”

NSN is now refocusing its engineering talent on improving the platform, including solutions to the PVR and HD issues for its earliest customers, Longdon said.