High Definition Video Conferencing Initiative keeps growing

The Initiative can now count on the commitment and support of some of the world’s leading telecommunications operators (BT, Deutsche Telekom AG, KPN, France Telecom-Orange, Telecom Italia and Telefónica) and infrastructure solutions vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, GENBAND, Italtel, Polycom, Quanta Computer, Huawei and ZTE).

HDVC, which is open to all interested parties, is built upon a simple and cooperative governance model. The Initiative has defined an open, interoperable and multi-operator environment (based on existing 3GPP, IETF and GSMA specifications) that supports easy-to-use services across networks and video equipment, regardless of the country of origin or destination of the call and overcoming the need for support of an operator’s service center.

This open environment will turn videoconferencing into a fully interoperable mass market service that enables each individual member to connect everything from mobile phones and tablets to large telepresence rooms into one globally supported network, fostering thegrowth of services thathas been constrained by the lack of interoperability among networks and manufacturers. Current videoconference services only work in closed solution environments and face significant difficulties when switching between networks and or video equipment from different manufacturers located in different countries.

Massive deployment of videoconferencing will make the collaboration between people and companies across different countries more efficient, helping to reduce travels and transportations costs and lowering carbon emissions, which willhave a beneficial impact on the environment.

In the first half of 2013, national and international commercial trials, targeted to enterprise customers, will be executed by Telefonica, BT, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia with support by Ericsson, Italtel, GENBAND, Quanta and Polycom as network and endpoint vendors, marking a major step forward towards full service’s commercializationopportunities by individual members.

About HDVC

The High Definition Video Conferencing Initiative (HDVC) is an open group of operators and manufacturers that collaborate to jointly agree on the usage of existing and emerging open standards for high quality video conferencing and communication in order to deploy and to promote video services in an IP-based telecommunications environment. The group is open for any company to join which is willing to support the Initiative’s activities towards the above mentioned goals.