David Farnor | On 19, Nov 2014

Yahoo!, Ustream and a host of other online companies have joined forces to form the Streaming Video Alliance.

The organisation will seek to facilitate the creation of architecture, standards and best practices that help the online video ecosystem to grow, as well as improve its efficiency for providers and preserve quality experiences for customers.

The first group of its kind in the online video sector, it says it will “deepen collaboration, accelerate innovation and redefine the way online video is streamed” worldwide. To do that, it will focus on three key areas to begin with:

Establish and promote an open architecture standard for streaming content delivery to allow economic and architectural scaling,

Define a standard practice for defining, measuring, optimizing and reporting the quality of the video streaming experience for content providers, network operators and consumers.

Create standards for interoperability and performance to ensure content providers, content delivery networks and network operators can efficiently stream high definition and high quality video to users throughout the world.

The collaboration has come about in response to the “extraordinary demand for and shift to” online video, Indeed, whether it is cord cutters in America or BBC iPlayer users in the UK, online streaming of video continues to grow at a steady rate.

“The hope is that companies throughout the ecosystem will join this effort to develop a multi-faceted solution that works for all elements of the ecosystem,” says the Alliance.

Alliance members comprise of a variety of industry leaders, including: Alcatel-Lucent, Charter Communications, Cisco, Comcast, EPIX, Fox Networks Group, Korea Telecom, Level 3 Communications, Liberty Global, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Qwilt, Telecom Italia, Telstra, Ustream, Wowza Media Systems and Yahoo!.

Major names such as Amazon, Netflix and YouTube (or Google) are notably absent from the line-up. The Alliance insists, though, that membership is “open to all companies from all sectors”.

For more information, visit www.streamingvideoalliance.org

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