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1 Motivation
In addition to the distribution of television programming, the IP-enabled cable television infrastructure can provide a means by which a myriad of advanced services (e.g., over the top and multi-screen services) are realized for the subscriber/consumer, including cloud computing services, big data services, artificial intelligence and interactivity services, etc. Such services include cloud DVR, time-shift TV (catchup, restart, pause/resume), video on demand and linear TV in the data plane as well as advanced search, recommendations, targeted advertisements, personalized UI, advanced fraud detection and much better business analytics in the control plane.
Rapid development of IP technologies enables cable television networks to be a versatile infrastructure for various interactive multimedia services, and their enabling platforms. Future IP based cable television networks, at a very high level, will connect with at least two entities:
- hybrid fibre/coaxial (HFC) access network or optical access networks;
- IP network;
- optional: public switched telephone network (PSTN) and/or other third party entities.
Additionally, the convergence of these entities (their delivery mechanisms as well as their services/applications) will catalyse the hybridization of new services and applications.
The system architecture for future IP-enabled cable networks should include the specifications of the functional components and define the interfaces between the above-mentioned entities, including their delivery mechanisms, and IP-based cable television networks as well as definition of how the various services and related subsystems (also called microservices) are deployed in the cloud, on premises, and/or at the edge of the network. Further, the microservice architecture should also include specifications and requirements of integrated media based on container, virtual machine, cloud, and other infrastructures to support the audiovisual media business carried out by microservices on a variety of infrastructures.
Possible future architecture could support cyber physical system (CPS) where integrated broadband cable networks play an important role to connect between physical space and cyber space. It could also provide some computational and / or AI assisted functionalities to support the CPS architecture. Services such as metaverse, various types of digital transformation are supposed to be provided by CPS.
IP-enabled advanced multimedia applications and services will require strict latency and packet-loss control. While it may not be necessary to develop new codecs for these applications and services, it is required to specify which codecs should be mandatory to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) of these advanced multimedia applications and services over IP-enabled cable television networks. The new Recommendations will describe the mandatory and optional requirements for IP-enabled multimedia applications and services in accordance with the specified QoS and security.
2 Question
Study items to be considered include, but are not limited to:
- What are the mechanics required of the subscriber's environment, to enable the trusted/secure access of multimedia services/applications?
- What high level services and micro-services application interfaces and event messages are necessary for the fulfilment of IP enabled multimedia applications and services?
- What are the mechanisms that need to be implemented in order to accommodate the various services and micro-services that will extend the reach of the cable network?
- What are the architectures for cyber physical system (CPS) that are connected to integrated broadband cable networks ?
- What are the technologies necessary for the provisioning multimedia interactive services, including primary cable services, third party services (e.g., over the top service), multi-screen service, cloud computing services, big data services, AI services, metaverse services and digital transformation services based on CPS ?
- What application configuration methods in every TV viewing device should be appropriate for these services and micro-services?
- What multimedia encoding packaging and transport methods should be employed to fully leverage historic HFC network capabilities, as well as future IP-enabled services and applications? For these applications:
o What type of audio and video codecs including trans-coding technology should be specified?
o What adaptive bit-rate (ABR) formats should be supported? How the corresponding encryption technologies should be applied?
o What parameters should be specified for latency and packet-loss control?
o What class of QoS should be used?
- What IP broadband and broadcast services and micro-services need to be supported by the next generation IP/HFC networks?
- How will these services be deployed - public cloud or private cloud including the edge?
- Can we create a standard architecture for these services, including what set of micro-services need to be included in each service?
- What appropriate big data architecture should be utilized for data driven applications?
3 Tasks
Tasks include, but are not limited to:
- the preparation of updated or new Recommendations, as required.
An up-to-date status of work under this Question is contained in the SG21 work programme (https://itu.int/ITU-T/workprog/wp_search.aspx?sp=18&q=18/21).
4 Relationships
Recommendations:
- Reference architecture: ITU-T J.700
- Application platform: ITU-T J.200-J.202; J.205-J.207; J.1200-series
- Set-top box and other TV viewing devices: ITU-T J.290-series
- Home network: ITU-T J.190, J.192
- Cloud-based converged media services: J.1300-series
Questions:
- 1/21, 15/21, 16/21, 17/21, 19/21, 20/21 and 22/21
Study groups:
- ITU T SG13
- ITU-R SG6
Other bodies:
- DVB
- ETSI
- IETF
- SCTE
WSIS Action Lines:
- C2, C3, C5, C6, C9, C11
Sustainable Development Goals:
- 9
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