Interactive Television: Bringing TV to Life

GTI selected Internet protocol television (IPTV) as an area of focus because of its great promise for the future. IPTV is the delivery of digital television services by broadband to registered subscribers in a closed network. It offers subscribers access to a range of video, voice and data services, including video-on-demand (VOD), Web browsing, advanced e-mail and messaging services, with a high degree of interactivity.

A generous gift of $500,000 ($314,000) over five years from a Georgia Tech alumnus will support GTI's IPTV effort. In addition, a major U.S. company has donated software and hardware, including digital interactive set-top boxes, to establish an IPTV test bed at GTI. The company will also serve as GTI's network deployment partner.
The test bed will allow GTI to deploy an IPTV network internationally and offer partners an international interactive television integrated development environment for product research.

The GT Ireland IPTV test bed will be deployed in phases as a distributed source and client network. The headend (central control and management of the clients and initial VOD content) will be located in Athlone, while other content will be sourced and introduced to the network at other locations. The clients will be based at Irish universities.

GTI's expertise in IPTV has already encouraged Atlanta-based IntelliOne Technologies to locate its European operations in Athlone. IntelliOne is a premier traffic information company that measures roadway speed by instantly analyzing mobile phone network usage. In October 2007, the company announced an industry-leading research and development project with GTI. Under a memorandum of understanding, GTI will work with the company to create an IPTV interface for IntelliOne's TrafficAid personal traffic guidance system.

Analysts uniformly predict a sharp rise in IPTV use in the coming years from a base of three million subscribers in 2005. Estimates range from 35 million to 50 million new subscribers worldwide by 2010. Revenue is projected to grow from less than $1 billion ($628 million) in 2005 to between $11 billion ($6.9 billion) and $13.4 billion ($8.4 billion) by 2010.

Ireland's Commission for Communications Regulation, in its strategy statement for the electronic communications sector for the period 2008-2010, also predicted that increased broadband adoption would encourage the growth of IPTV and other value-added services.

IPTV is of particular interest to telephone companies and broadband Internet service providers because it allows them to use their existing broadband networks to offer subscribers a "triple play" of video, voice and data services and compete more effectively with cable companies. IPTV also has applications in entertainment, content, and distance learning - areas of particular interest to GTI - as well as in mobile communications and telemedicine, where it can be used interactively to improve health outcomes or the delivery of services. For instance, a video phone would allow a physician to consult more effectively with a patient in a remote location.

Despite IPTV's rapid growth, significant technical challenges remain. In the absence of uniform industry standards, the current IPTV marketplace is heavily proprietary, with a number of players using incompatible equipment and searching for innovative interactive IPTV applications to differentiate their products.

GTI researchers, led by Robert Funk and Jeff Smart, and in collaboration with academic institutions and industrial partners, are focusing on three areas of IPTV development:

• Interactive application development, e-commerce, and e-learning;
• Network management and monitoring, and network delivery methods;
• Test bed development.

GTI is also actively seeking corporate sponsorship of its work on network management, which examines ways to ensure quality of delivery and services of the network and identify potential chokepoints in the system.