The International Telecommunication Union has announced the first set of global standards for Internet Protocol TV. The IPTV standards were built with technical contributions from service providers and manufacturers from the information and communication technology sector. The new standards were developed by the Focus Group on IPTV in ITU's telecommunication standardisation sector. Contained within the documents produced by the Focus Group are high-level architecture and frameworks needed by service providers to rollout IPTV services. Twenty-one documents covering IPTV requirements, architecture, quality of service, security, digital rights management, unicast and multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks will be submitted to the ITU-T Study Group charged with progressing and distributing the work. ITU's next phase of IPTV work, IPTV-Global Standards Initiative, will centre on the speedy preparation of standards based on documents produced by FG IPTV and the detailed protocols required. The first meeting of IPTV-GSI will convene in Seoul from 15 to 22 January 2008.
