Since the launch of IPTV based services in early 2000 (Bright Telecom first deployed IPTV in Australia late 2001), there has been a constant stream of "defacto standards" produced by each vendor.

According to Infonetics Research after a year of very rapid growth in many countries, by the end of 2007 there were about 10 million worldwide subscribers of basic IPTV services.

However, this has occurred in an environment in which much of the technology and many of the systems in use are proprietary, even if they may use isolated common standardized elements drawn from other applications for certain parts of the IPTV system.

A big effort has been underway for the past 2 years to create a much more open environment in which end-to-end IPTV systems and solutions use defined standards, and such moves are garnering growing support throughout the industry.

Even an online poll held during a Light Reading Webinar showed that just over 50 percent of respondents thought that open standards were essential, 42 percent thought they were desirable, and only 7 percent thought that it was too late to consider them, as proprietary standards were too well embedded already.

Light reading has published an article on Open IPTV standards which make for a very interesting read.