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3rd September 2003

IMTC, the International Multimedia Telcommunications Consortium, has announced the first interoperability tests over a live 3G network of real time multimedia delivery through Packet Switched Streaming (PSS). Leading vendors in mobile phone and network technologies have been conducting the first interoperability tests at the Ericsson Research Center this week, thus making a decisive step forward in enabling exciting new applications in mobile multimedia communications.

The event has been organized by the IMTC PSS Activity Group (PSS-AG), and 12 PSS-AG member companies have been participating.

"So far our testing cycles have been mainly looking at the ability of our different systems components to talk to each other. Now we have entered a real-life environment, which means our activity has more value after we have tested the behaviour of all the implementations over a cellular network," explains Amir Wolf, Chairman of the Activity Group. The tests were done over a live WCDMA network provided by Ericsson, which allows the delivery of large multimedia packets. "Together with the testing over the network, the group also used a network simulator to test the behaviour of our multimedia servers and clients in a noisy environment," says Ralph Neff, co-chairman of the Activity Group.

The uses of this technology range from security to entertainment. For example, the pictures from a camera overlooking an intersection in the morning-traffic could be transmitted in real time over a wireless network onto a screen of a mobile electronic device, giving users the possibility to select alternative routes to avoid congestion. Breaking news could be watched without having to store them first. Live entertainment could reach the mobile users.

The full set of 20,000 test results of this testing cycle were managed and controlled by the web-tracking tool named "IOTZilla" supplied to the group by Ximpo Group Ltd, Israel.

About PSS

The Packet Switched Streaming Activity Group was formed by the IMTC in order to perform interoperability tests for Packet-Switched Streaming according to 3GPP Technical Specifications 26.233 and 26.234, for delivering/streaming multimedia content over wireless networks. It was established in fall 2000 with 3 participating companies. Since then the group has grown rapidly. Currently there are 19 members, including the newest members Sony-Ericsson, ST-Microelectronics Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, which joined in 2003. Other members of the Activity Group are: Emblaze Systems (Israel), Emuzed (USA), Ericsson (Sweden), Fraunhofer IIS (Germany), Hantro Products Oy (Finland), LGE (Korea), LogicaCMG (USA), Mobixell Networks (Israel), Motorola (USA), Nextreaming (Korea), Nokia (Finland), PacketVideo (USA), RealNetworks (USA), Royal Philips Electronics (The Netherlands) and Vidiator Technology (USA).