This is probably the central issue facing all players in the telecom industry today: the fastest-growing segments in the communications sector are based on content and community, but both competitive and established telcos have yet to carve out a strong, revenue-generating role. Instead, services such as Google, YouTube and Facebook, are riding for free (from a telco perspective) over a network infrastructure provided mostly by them. Put simply, telcos want a value chain that offers them a fair share.

There are at least two ways of tackling the opportunity.

The first is to launch new, operator-owned, content-based services such as IPTV so that operators can win a direct share of the burgeoning content market.

The TM Forum’s recent amalgamation with the Internet Protocol Detail Record Organization (IPDR.org) is an important step towards building IPTV focus and expertise within the forum.  IPDR.org concentrates on next-generation IP service usage and exchange standards and has a program to develop standards for IPTV.
Click here to learn more about IPDR

The IPDR is also central to the second approach: where established network operators build partnerships and offer value-added network services - such as billing, security, or enhanced performance - to other players in the emerging value chain.

Helping define the emerging technical and business relationships required for this shared participation will be important work over the next few years.  TM Forum has established a Service Delivery Framework (SDF) team to define end-to-end management of next generation services and the establishment of rapid multi-supplier service delivery. An important part of this work will be to ‘fill the gaps’ in existing TM Forum standards and frameworks.
Click here to learn more about the Service Delivery Framework team (SDF)

Automating the service delivery process while maintaining full flexibility is critical too. A TM Forum team has developed an innovative project to reduce service ‘production’ costs and speed new services to market. 
Click here to learn more about the Product and Service Assembly Catalyst (PSA)

The changing value chain is also being addressed by the Telecom/media Convergence team which addresses key issues around digital rights management, content acquisition and its storage and delivery.
Click here to learn more about the Telecom/media Convergence