Louisville, Colorado, January 26, 2006—The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has approved a suite of CableLabs�® PacketCable™ specifications as standards for the international version of services including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

PacketCable-based standards are known internationally as IPCablecom, and this recently approved suite covers such topics as architecture, network call signaling, call management server (CMS) to CMS signaling, quality of service (QoS), support for multimedia and other functions necessary to provide time-critical interactive services over a cable television network using IP.

The ITU approval stems from work carried out in October by ITU Study Group (SG) 9, which is entitled Integrated Broadband Cable Networks and Television and Sound Transmission group. SG 9 is chaired by CableLabs President and CEO Dr. Richard R. Green. ITU approval came in late November after consultation with its member states and sector members.

Many of the approved recommendations originated in CableLabs. In addition to the suite of 16 PacketCable™ 1.5 specifications that now are international standards, the ITU also standardized on CableLabs contributions from the DOCSIS® and CableHome® projects. J.128 references a Set-top Gateway specification for transmission systems for interactive cable television services. J.197 pertains to high-level requirements for a Digital Rights Management Bridge to a Home Network and a revision to J.192, a residential gateway to support the delivery of cable data services, which aligns it with CableHome® 1.1.

A new Recommendation J.601, for Transport of Large Scale Digital Imagery (LSDI) applications, defines transport technologies for LSDI with resolutions 3840x 2160 pixels (picture elements) and 7680 x 4320 pixels.

Recommendation J.280, Digital Program Insertion, or splicing application programming interface was amended to add functionality that creates a new logical multiplex type that allows for multiple ports to be utilized. Previously when utilizing certain types of content servers over Gigabit Ethernet, it was not always practical to create a multi-program transport stream that would work using the original standard.

Other contributions from CableLabs that are in the progress stage in SG 9 for further consideration at the next meeting are: J.dti, DOCSIS Timing Interface Specification; J.bb, Battery Backup for Cable-based Devices; and J.161, audio and video codec requirements for provision of bidirectional services over cable television networks using cable modems.

The ITU is the United Nations specialized agency in the field of telecommunications. The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T), a major organ within the ITU, is responsible for studying technical, operating and tariff questions and issuing Recommendations on them with a view to standardizing telecommunications on a worldwide basis.

The next meeting of SG 9 is scheduled for May 2006.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs is dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications technologies and to helping its cable operator members integrate those advancements into their business objectives. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org, www.ebif.tv and www.tru2way.com.

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