Nortel Launches Video Application Developer Program

At the TelcoTV show in Anaheim last month, telecommunications technology giant, Nortel, launched a video application developer program which it says will help third-party developers quickly create applications that help service providers meet growing demand for advanced video services, such as the ability to share media across multiple devices (e.g., computers, TV's and mobiles). The company says that the program is designed to encourage developers to build new video applications using a toolkit of basic and advanced services on the Nortel Video Services Platform (VSP) 9500, which was launched earlier this year. "Consumers want the latest and greatest services--such as interactive advertising, online yellow pages with click-to-call functionality, and social networking tie-ins to popular TV shows--and they aren't willing to wait for a service provider who is slow to offer them," Sameer Sheth, Nortel's general manager for video solutions, said in a prepared statement. "With Nortel's video developer program, which uses an open-standards based approach, service providers can implement new video applications in their network through third-party developers much faster and more cost-effectively because the process of developing and launching them becomes very simple."

Nortel claims that the VSP 9500 facilitates the rapid introduction of new services on both cable and IPTV networks. It uses open interfaces based on Web services, enabling applications to be easily developed and deployed, the company says. The platform is part of a larger Nortel corporate initiative to develop SOA-enabled software and services. According to Nortel, third-party application developers who subscribe to the new VSP Application Developer Program will be able to access a variety of related development resources.

A number of companies have joined the new program to date: LVL Studio, a digital media design agency which is developing interactive applications that are designed to take advantage of the convergence of TV, Web, wired and wireless markets, says that it joined in order to integrate its applications with a wide variety of network infrastructures. "We see the VSP 9500 as being a key component for the deployment of convergence applications in the rapidly evolving telecom industry," LVL Studio founder and president, Jean-Francois Gagnon, said in a prepared statement. "Nortel's VSP Developer Program lets us deploy our applications on a variety of network types without the headaches that would normally accompany such deployments. This is the key advantage of the VSP." Other members of the program include independent IPTV consulting, system integration and application development company, Mariner; and Casero, a provider of white-label services, such as personal media management, which are intended to integrate with service providers' wireless, broadband and IPTV offerings. Nortel says that it plans to make a number of additional resources available to program participants early next year, including development licenses, software support, interface documentation and user group meetings.

Nortel also used the TelcoTV show to announce that Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks, a telecom service provider in West Virginia, and BIT, a service provider in Virginia, are using its IPTV solutions to power new interactive TV applications, including click-to-call, text messaging and picture sharing. In addition, it showcased a number of IPTV and other video applications at the show, including a widget-based, personalizable TV interface that displays such content as news, weather, sports schedules and video on the TV screen; interactive TV ads featuring click-to-call and click-to-purchase capabilities; single- subscription video services that allow viewers to order VOD titles on their set-top box and then watch them on other devices, such as laptops and mobiles; and interactive two-way multimedia communication between a mobile device and an Internet-connected BD-Live Blu-ray player, allowing viewers to receive photos on the Blu-ray player and make a click-to-call back to the sender.