ImAc at the ITU The Future of Television for Europe

The ​International Telecommunication Union (ITU) encourages a dialogue among stakeholders in the various regions of the world to discuss the future of Television. To this end, following the success of “The Future of Cable TV (Geneva, Switzerland, 25-26 January 2018) and The Future of TV for the Americas (Bogotá, Colombia, 26 November 2018), the ITU held a Workshop on “The Future of Television for Europe”, which took place on 7 June 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland at the ITU Headquarters.

Figure 1: a flier of the ITU workshop with te name, dates, location and information in white text on a light blue background on the left-hand side, and there is an image of someone using a VR headset looking at different types of video footage.

Figure 2: Group photo of everyone who attend the everyone who attending the event. They’re all smiling and standing outside in front of the event building.

This event, which is jointly organized by the three Sectors of the ITU (Radiocommunication: ITU-R; Standardization: ITU-T; and Development: ITU-D), focused on the diverse emerging broadband and broadcast technologies, including cable TV, with the aim to assist countries in the region of Europe to assess challenges, dynamics and opportunities.

This workshop was organized within the context of the European Regional Initiative approved by WTDC-17 on “Broadband Infrastructure, Broadcasting and Spectrum Management”. The event was also supported by the ITU-R SG6 (Broadcasting service) and ITU-T SG9 (Cable broadband and TV), which will meet in collocation, 6-13 June 2019 (see TSB Collective 4/9).​

Figure 3: image of a small group of people using a VR headset to look at a screen with grey, yellow, light blue and dark blue icons at a stall

The aim of the workshop was to discuss the future of television in the region with relevant European and international stakeholders, covering regulatory and policy frameworks, emerging and convergent ICT Infrastructures and services, as well as user interfaces and accessibility issues. It also provided an opportunity to discuss TV-related regional and international standardization and to share best practices and case studies on cable TV roll-outs and other new TV services. ImAc had an active participation with a booth where Belén Agulló and Pilar Orero (UAB) welcomed visitors and showed demos of some tools like the User Interaction. Factsheets and a video was also available with the latest information regarding accessibility services in immersive 360 media environments.

Tagged as: workshop