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 global streaming industry has spent the better part of a decade chasing subscriber counts as the primary metric of success. That era is now formally over. New market data from Omdia confirms that the industry has crossed a decisive threshold; one that shifts the competitive playing field from growth-at-all-costs to monetization discipline. For senior executives navigating media, advertising, and technology strategy, the implications extend well beyond entertainment. A Historic Revenue Crossover Online video revenue increased 13.5 percent to $176 billion in 2025, while pay-TV revenue declined 4 percent to $170 billion; marking the first time in the industry's history that streaming has surpassed legacy pay-TV in revenue terms. This is not a rounding error or a statistical artifact; it represents the culmination of more than a decade of structural disruption to the traditional broadcast and cable TV model. Global subscriptions to online video services reached 2.24 billion by the ...