Convergent IPTV services over IP multimedia Subsystem

IP multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is one the most promising architectures for IP Television (IPTV). It proposes a common control plane achieving a certain service convergence and guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS). The QoS issue is a major research challenge in NextTV4all, an ambitious project of the competitive pole Images&Réseaux in France that proposes a package of innovative services enriching audiovisual experience on both fixed and mobile devices over an IMS IPTV architecture as specified in standardization bodies such as ETSI TISPAN and 3GPP. In this paper, we present the main results of the project and describe the different activities that have been conducted from the service specification to the demonstrator development. Six innovative services are deployed such as the incoming call management and the chat room service that will be explained in detail in this paper. The paper ends with an outline of the QoS management in the IMS core and within the transport block.