Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., Sony Corp. and others said Tuesday that they will unify the technical standards for Internet Protocol television (IPTV) services. The standardization process will be led by a forum established by three major telecommunications services firms: NTT, KDDI Corp. and Softbank BB Corp., a Softbank Corp. subsidiary. The forum has since been joined by a total of 15 businesses and organizations, as well as two individuals. Its members now include Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Toshiba Corp., Sharp Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., as well as the five major commercial TV broadcasters in Tokyo and Japan Broadcasting Corp ., the public broadcaster that is better known as NHK.
The forum is to draw up unified standards by the end of August and urge Japanese IPTV service providers and consumer electronics makers to develop compatible technologies and equipment.
Sony, Matsushita and others aim to start selling flat-panel TVs with built-in IPTV receivers by the end of March.
The number of subscribers to broadband communications services in Japan reached 28.73 million as of March 31, enabling the spread of IPTV services.
The forum is expected to pitch its IPTV standards to the International Telecommunication Union and other global bodies for use worldwide. The Ministry of Communications plans to help the forum pitch the standards to the ITU because Japanese consumer electronics makers stand to benefit if the benchmarks are adopted worldwide.
Courtesy Tradingmarkets.com.
