No abstract

IPTV is regarded as one of the key technologies of triple play services by telecommunication incumbents. It is seen as the differentiator to reduce customer churn. However, as more operators deploy this service, the factors for differentiation are dissolving rapidly. In this paper we present how Identity Management can enrich IPTV and thus provide a variety of new business opportunities that will foster an operator's position and the contractual bindings with its customers. We present novel business models that are made possible by integrated Identity Management and describe their importance to the user. Furthermore, we address privacy aspects for IPTV service portfolios -a topic which is crucial to gain user acceptance for new services.

One of the challenges in the world of interactive digital TV is to improve the user experience facilitated by these services. In this chapter, the authors discuss their approach towards reaching this goal, which is to integrate community and interactivity services (“Web 2.0”-style) of third-party providers from out side the world of IPTV into an IPTV service offering (e.g., services on the public Internet, and services offered by telco operators and end-users). The foundation of this work is an open service infrastructure that facilitates this form of integration. The authors discuss the set of service enablers that make up the infrastructure and present a working prototype implementation that serves as a proof of concept of their approach. They also outline four possible scenarios for the future of IPTV, which are based on a trend analysis and form the basis for developing business models made possible by their infrastructure.