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UCIF Member Communications
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lbraun@inventures.com

SAN RAMON, Calif.--The Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCI Forum) today announced that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has reviewed and approved a set of video coding profiles developed by the UCI Forum. The UCI Forum submitted these profiles to the ITU for inclusion in the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) design for its H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard. A corresponding adoption of the same profiles into the MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC standard has also entered into the approval process of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

H.264/MPEG-4 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) interoperability is a key area of focus for the UCI Forum. These profiles and the resulting ITU/ISO/IEC standard will play an integral role in the UCI Forum’s interoperability certification for SVC-based video systems.

SVC is already implemented in enterprise-class videoconferencing solutions from a number of leading vendors including RADVISION, Teliris and Vidyo, with the intent to implement SVC on the roadmap for companies like LifeSize, Microsoft and Polycom. However, current SVC implementations are not fully interoperable, and therefore a standard needs to be defined in order to certify interoperability scenarios.

“The UCI Forum is gaining momentum and making great strides toward defining interoperability, and this is another positive step in that direction,” said Bernard Aboba, president of UCI Forum. “ITU and ISO/IEC acceptance of our SVC profile proposal will accelerate interoperability verification and give end users the confidence that their UC technologies are fully interoperable, even in heterogeneous environments.”

“H.264/MPEG-4 AVC was the product of considerable collaboration and I am pleased to see that this cooperative spirit remains in good health,” said Malcolm Johnson, Director of the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T). “Scalable video is one of the important features of this award-winning codec, and UCI Forum's contribution to the expansion of its interoperability and applicability will no doubt help to maintain H.264's position as the dominant global standard in video compression.”

The UCI Forum is an open industry alliance that works with its members to fully leverage customers’ investments in communications systems and unite their global organizations. The UCI Forum will be at Enterprise Connect, March 26 -29 in Orlando, Fla. An open networking reception is taking place Tuesday, March 27 from 7 - 9 p.m. at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center. If you’re interested in attending, please register here: www.regonline.com/ucifenterprise.

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About the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum

The Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCI Forum) is a non-profit alliance of worldwide communications technology leaders working together to realize the potential of unified communications (UC) by increasing efficiency, decreasing implementation costs and improving the interoperability experience for UC customers. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook or visit www.uciforum.org and the UCI Forum blog to learn more.

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