ATIS announced the formation of the IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF) to develop ATIS standards and related technical and operations activities that enable the interoperability, interconnection and implementation of IPTV systems and services, including video on demand and interactive TV services. �IPTV will enable consumers to use television as never before,� said Bill Smith, CTO of BellSouth and chairman of ATIS. �Video on demand and interactive services are among the exciting �killer apps� that IPTV will make possible. The ATIS IIF will provide the neutral ground for carriers, service providers, application developers, content providers and equipment manufacturers to work together and make the wide-scale deployment of standardized IPTV a reality.� The ATIS Board of Directors launched the IIF at its quarterly meeting Thursday on the recommendation of the ATIS IPTV Exploratory Group (IEG), which was formed in April to examine the technical issues surrounding the successful wide-scale deployment of IPTV. �The ATIS IIF will provide the industry with the big picture for IPTV technology standardization,� said Kevin Schneider, CTO of ADTRAN and co-chair of the IEG. �ATIS will create an overall reference architecture supporting deployment of IPTV and work with standards groups external to ATIS to establish standards that produce an end-to-end IPTV solution.�
The world of eCommerce payments has evolved. As we look toward the latter half of this decade, we're witnessing a transformation in how digital commerce operates, with a clear shift toward localized payment solutions within a global marketplace. The numbers tell a compelling story. According to Juniper Research's latest analysis, global eCommerce transactions are set to reach $11.4 trillion by 2029, marking a 63 percent increase from $7 trillion in 2024. This growth isn't just about volume – it's about fundamental changes in how people pay for goods and services online. Perhaps most striking is the projected dominance of Alternative Payment Methods (APMs), which are expected to account for 69 percent of global transactions by 2029, with 360 billion transactions processed through these channels. eCommerce Payments Market Development What makes this shift particularly interesting is how it reflects the democratization of digital commerce. Traditional card-based systems ar...