As the thought of delivering multimedia services on wireless devices gains more attention, the Wireless Multimedia Forum aims to ensure interoperability among wireless multimedia protocols.
PacketVideo Inc. last month established the new group with about 20 founding members, including representatives from vendors, carriers, content providers and software developers. The idea, it said, is to make sure multimedia content can be developed once in a format that can be read by all wireless devices to avoid fragmented or competing standards.
“The Holy Grail is to circumvent fragmentation in the wireless content arena caused by the use of multiple protocols,” said Martin Hall, chief technology officer at Stardust.com, the managing member of the forum. “Without such implementation agreements among vendors, content developers would either have to choose among protocols and development platforms-which would limit the availability of content to mobile users-or go through the time and expense of developing the same content again and again for multiple platforms.”
The forum created a Technical Working Group to tackle that issue. It plans to select a common compression technology and service delivery platform for delivering streaming and downloadable interactive multimedia content to wireless networks. The technical group was set to meet April 28 in San Jose, Calif.
In addition, the forum’s Business Working Group wants to identify new applications that will drive the technology and determine general business cases and their technical requirements.
Other concerns of the WMF include billing, copyright, security and management issues. Members include Matsushita Communication, Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Nortel Networks, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, SignalSoft and Sonera.
Lucent’s event
Lucent Technologies Inc., which sponsors the annual Global Wireless Multimedia Forum, also hopes to drive the multimedia services industry.
Lucent’s event brings together various players in the multimedia space to discuss possible applications and uses for the technology. It looks to promote collaboration between attendees, which include content and application developers, device manufacturers and network operators.
“We established it as a gathering place for the players in wireless Internet,” said Sam Gronner, media relations director at Lucent. “It’s primarily a venue for free and open exchange of ideas. It’s wide open to any type of application we think will catch fire with consumers.”
The second forum was held in mid-April.
While the WMF is centered primarily on the technology and standards, GWMF’s purpose is more to promote the market and applications.
