1Q 2011 . info@IMSForum.org . www.NGNForum.org . www.IMSForum.org

Dear NGN IMS Forum Members and Colleagues,,

The NGN IMS Forum recently launched its new Smart Energy & Smart Grid Forum, which focuses on two main areas: next-generation communications and NGN energy applications. The Forum.s Next Generation Communications group will continue to focus on the areas of IMS, SDP, 4G, VoIP, RCS/RMS, IP video, IP billing, IP security and interoperability/plugfests.

Our new Smart Energy Forum will focus on NGN energy applications and delivery systems such as smart grid, renewable energy, security, billing and integration for NGN revenue generating apps.

A number of major telecom operators and vendors are driving the initiative to expand into the growing energy management field and apps delivery.

Telecom & Smart Grid
Utilities traditionally have developed their own networks and communication systems. However, with the NGN smart energy products and systems required to integrate with smart grids, utility companies are looking toward telecommunications industry partnerships with apps, technology development and OSS/BSS as well as to manage consumer demand.



Smart grid technologies help improve power reliability through smart devices and applications that adapt in real-time to consumer demand and environmental conditions. Governments are promoting this sophisticated electricity network as a way to address energy independence, global warming, and emergency resilience issues.

Smart grids also will require a higher level of security because they link large and small utilities. In addition, utility companies are interested in securing their individual customer product data to include advanced IP addressing such as IPv6.

Where are the smart grid telecommunication opportunities (technology design, engineering and development)?

Home networking apps and management, which will be one of the forum.s focus areas, is one of the biggest markets for smart grid. Some chip makers already have started to install smart grid .smart chips. in products such as appliances globally.

Some immediate challenges around smart grid implementation strategies include developing interoperability standards and protocols.

Smart Grid Apps Market Outlook

According to Smart Grid News, the U.S. smart grid industry is valued at about $21.4 billion . by 2014, it is projected to exceed $42.8 billion. Given the success of the smart grids in the U.S., the world market is expected to grow at a faster rate, surging from $69.3 billion to $171.4 billion by 2014.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocate billions for energy projects, including $4.5 billion to modernize the electric grid. In addition, other major government initiatives that will increase telecom-related funding include $7.2 billion in broadband deployment grants administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Utility Service.

Telecommunications operators and vendors are recognizing that the commercial potential for these new NGN and NGC apps will be a growing and lucrative market.

The NGN Forum will be launching the Smart Energy/Smart Grid apps group this quarter. We welcome the telecom and utility industries to become more involved in helping us move the bar for NGN IMS and smart energy services deployment. NGN

Regards,

Michael Khalilian
President
NGN Forum and IMS Forum

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Market Research Corner

According to In-Stat report, The US Market for Over-the-Top Video Services:

• US broadband households that view OTT video will grow from 38 million in 2009 to 81 million by 2014. Revenue from OTT video will more than quadruple by 2014 as it approaches $20 billion (.15.9 billion)
• A primary success criteria for OTT video services is access to unique, first-run TV and movie content
• Over 1/3 of the 18.24 year old adult households stream full-length OTT video on a regular basis, compared to less than 10% of adult households in the over 45 year-old age brackets

In the U.S. alone, Pyramid Research estimates that revenue from mobile video services will reach $16 billion by 2014. However, much of the demand will come from Europe and Asia/Pacific. According to this recent report by Pyramid Research (See chart below):

• The number of global mobile video subscriptions will grow to 534 million in 2014, reaching a penetration rate of 8.5% of total mobile subscriptions, up from the current 2.5% level
• In the U.S. alone, Pyramid estimates that revenue from mobile video services will reach $16 billion by 2014. However, much of the demand will come from Europe and Asia/Pacific
• Asia-Pacific will be a crucial component of the mobile video opportunity - Already markets such as Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea lead in terms of mobile video subscriptions penetration, but important uptake in India in the next five years is also expected

According to ABI Research.s latest, Mobile Video Services Report:

• Revenue from mobile video services is expected to top $2 billion worldwide in 2013 for video telephony, video messaging, video sharing, video-on-demand, VoD downloads, and .other. video services
• Video services revenue only amounts to about $121 million this year but growth curve is very steep & will only continue to accelerate through the end of our forecast period in 2015.
• Video sharing will be a small portion of this revenue while video telephony, video messaging and video-on-demand will account for the lion.s share
• Consumers. appetite for mobile infotainment, sparked by the availability of 3G networks, is a main driver.

NGN Forum Q & A

Q & A with Ray Greenan, Global Marketing Manager, Telecommunications, Symantec

Please provide us with some brief background on your company

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help our customers from consumers and small businesses to the largest global organizations secure and manage their information against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently than any other company. Our Company's unique focus is to eliminate risks to information, technology and processes independent of the device, platform, interaction or location.

Symantec is committed to delivering global solutions that meet local needs. To do that, we have operations in more than 40 countries, including research and development facilities and 24x7 Security Operations Centers and Security Response Labs located around the world. Symantec has established some of the most comprehensive sources of Internet threat data in the world through the Symantec Global Intelligence Network. This network captures worldwide security intelligence data that gives Symantec analyst's unparalleled sources of data to identify and analyze, to deliver protection and provide informed commentary on emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam.

What impending NGN related issues do you see for the carriers?

The growth of mobile data usage and device sophistication brings with it a threat of exploitation against network resources, operator revenue, and subscriber trust. By approaching mobile security as a business opportunity, mobile operators have the ability to reduce costs while building subscriber satisfaction.

A consistent policy-based view of user behavior across all services such as SMS, MMS, Email and Web allows mobile operators to identify new exploits whether these are mobile viruses, denial of service , spam or fraudulent phishing attacks; and respond to protect network assets, subscriber privacy and subscriber credit.

Similarly, parents and enterprises want to ensure correct and controlled mobile usage, with the capability to set and manage their own acceptable use policies. By offering this flexibility an operator can respond to different societal responses to age-sensitive content; allow parents to make their own decisions about a child's safe use of mobile phones, and provide enterprises with visibility and control across different employee roles.

What IMS and NGN solutions and products does Symantec offer and what are some of the key differentiators for your company in this market?

Symantec's Next Generation Network Protection allows operators to understand and respond to the specific interests of an individual subscriber in response to their dynamic behavior, across all bearers. This allows operators to grow messaging revenues, maximise advertising revenue, drive response rates and maintain the reputation of their brands.

Symantec Next Generation Network Benefits:

• Achieving legislative compliance for content delivery or preventing the imposition of new regulation
• Enabling new revenue generation through premium services
• Improving customer acqusition and retention through service profiling and content targeting
• Driving increased corporate usage and adoption of mobile data services
• Resisting the unsolicited message contamination of wholesale content services
• Protecting core network assets against service impacting security incidents
• Promoting child protection and safe mobile usage within the brand
• Avoiding damaging media publicity

How does NGN Forums leadership benefit your company and its customers

By having a broad based community of vendors, carriers and solution providers sharing industry insight and requirements we are able to bring solutions that communication service providers need to market more quickly. We are also able to lend our own unique insights about security and trusted communications to guide others. The end result is a more vibrant market overall for everyone while providing end usres of communication provider service a better over all experience

To have your company considered for a profile in the Q & A section of this newsletter send an email to pr@ngnforum.org.

NGN Forum IMS Forum Technical Working Groups Update

The NGN IMS Forum will be completing its Business Models for the Development of Applications Over Broadband IP Networks Working Group document in the fourth quarter of 2010. This paper will develop new business models and use cases for applications running over IMS, 3G and 4G networks.

With data still accounting for only a fraction of carriers' revenue, and standard voice minutes all but commoditized, carriers are looking for new sources of revenue (e.g. adding new voice features, and multimedia applications developed by 3^rd party developers). This paper looks at how to open up networks to support innovative business models (including IMS, 4G LTE, 4G Wimax, Security, Service Delivery Platform, Cloud and Smart Grid technologies) that can be integrated with the 'all-IP' business model.

Topics to be covered in this document include:

• Business Models for Operators
  • The Freemium Business Model
  • The two-sided telecoms business model
  • Over The Top (OTT) business model
  • Pay-as-you-go business model
  • Low-cost carrier business model
  • Razors and blades business model (Loss Leader)
• Challenges for operators
• Conclusions
• NGN Applications

We are now soliciting input on IMS Business Models and on applications Use Cases for this document. An example of the type of use case we are looking for is enclosed below:

Basic VoIP (Managed)

Over the top (OTT) voice services are un-managed. For example, Google or Skype VoIP services offer only a minimal email support, based on Q&A and user community self-support. While billing is present with the services, there is practically no mechanism to redress a billing error or to correct for a call dropped or a call of poor quality. In contrast a VoIP Managed service provides a number of distinctive characteristics:

• Voice quality is monitored. While not actively managed (i.e. there is no guaranty of service), voice quality information is available and stored by the operator for analysis and customer service purposes. For instance, based on a customer complain, an operator can provide a refund
  
  
• Voice quality can be preset by the user. In this case, the user can choose not to complete a call in case of known network congestion, or to get real-time feedback on the call quality. For example, calls can have a high quality audio path between the caller and the callee and low quality audio on the reverse. In that case, the caller can get feedback, such as beep tone, telling that the other party hears a low quality call.
  
  
• Voice quality can be guaranteed by the service provider. In that case, there is an underlining assumption that policy control is active in the operator network and as a result the call is actively managed by the service provider
  
  

NGN Applications to be covered include the following:

• Basic VoIP (Managed)
• HD VoIP
• Personal Voice with multimedia content
• Social Voice with multimedia (OTT provided services)
• Personal and Social Voice with multimedia (network provided services)
• Personal video with multimedia
• Social video with multimedia content
• Applications over wireless broadband networks
• Applications over High Speed Packet Access Plus (HSPA)
• Application Challenge: Unpredictable Success

Please email your questions and contributions to the PR@ngnforum.org. If accepted, they will be featured prominently in this document. Also, please indicate if you want to attribute the contribution to you personally, your company or if you want to make an anonymous contribution.

We encourage NGN telecom operators and vendors to become more involved in helping us move the bar for new IP applications. For additional information and to participate contact us at info@ngnforum.org or visit the IMS website at www.IMSForum.org

Our next IMS Plugfest. and NGN Plugfest. interoperability test event, which will focus on many of these topics and others, will be held in the first quarter of 2011 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, NH. Registration for this Plugfest and Working Group is now open for any service providers, integrators and vendors who would like to participate (www.imsforum.org/Plugfest). For additional information please contact admin@ngnforum.org

NGN Forum Calendar of Events

See the NGN/IMS Forum at the following 2011 events:

• February 2-4: Internet Telephony Conpoference & Ex, Miami
• February 2-4: 4G Wireless Evolution, Miami
• February 14-17: Mobile World congress, Barcelona
• March 20-23: COMPTEL, Las Vegas
• March 22-24: CTIA Wireless Spring, Orlando, FL
• March 28-30: Mobile Broadband Asia, Singapore
• April 9-14: NAB Show, Las Vegas
• May 23-26: Management World 2011, Dublin, Ireland
• June 6-8: FTTx and Next Generation Access, Berlin
• June 14-16: The Cable Show, Chicago, IL

The NGN Forum and IMS Forum invite members to join its exclusive Speakers’ Bureau. Member companies have an excellent opportunity to market their companies and senior executives while representing the Forum at future trade shows and conferences. Simply contact us with a copy of the proposed speaker’s bio and indicate any specific NGN and IMS-related speaking topics and expertise. Speaking topic abstracts of one or two paragraphs are especially helpful. Please send to: pr@ngnforum.org

NGN/IMS Forum in the News

The following highlights some recent press coverage of the NGN/IMS Forum:

Recent NGN/IMS Forum Press Releases

Why Join the NGN Forum or IMS Forum?

The NGN/IMS Forum's mission is to accelerate the interoperability of NGN and IMS applications and services, enabling enterprise and residential consumers to quickly benefit from the delivery of quadruple play voice, video, Internet and mobile services over broadband via cable, mobile and fixed networks.

NGN/IMS applications and services comprise residential VoIP, entertainment including IPTV and gaming, IP Centrex / IP PBX and unified communications for business including fixed-mobile converged services, videoconferencing and web-collaboration. NGN and IMS networks include DSL, Cable, GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi and WiMAX implementations.

The NGN/IMS Forum Plugfests, typically held every 3 to 4 months, bring together dozens of industry-leading NGN and IMS vendors from around the world, all of whom build real, full-featured, NGN and IMS networks during the test event.

If you are interested in joining the NGN/IMS Forum, Plugfests or in participating in any of the working groups or marketing programs, please contact the NGN/IMS Forum.

All are invited to participate in the industry's first open NGN/IMS Community where Forum members, those involved in various NGN and IMS working groups, the IMS Linkedin group, our industry and colleagues around the world can participate in active, mutually beneficial discussions. Take a moment to register now.

Our members are shaping the future of the NGN and IMS. Joining the NGN/IMS Forum enables members to:

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Press Contact: pr@ngnforum.org