Comcast, Charter, 14 other companies form Streaming Video Alliance

Conspicuously launching without the two biggest operators in the Internet video market, a group of 17 MVPDs, programmers and technology vendors have formed a new industry trade group, the Streaming Video Alliance.

The group, which was partly organized by Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn, includes leading pay-TV operators Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) and Liberty Global, as well as a who's who of other video industry heavyweights: Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Viacom, Epix, Fox Networks Group, Korea Telecom, Level 3 Communications, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Qwilt, Telecom Italia, Telstra, Ustream, Wowza Media Systems and Yahoo!.

Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), which together consume up to half of all Internet traffic with their video streams, are not in the group of 17.

The Streaming Video Alliance, a statement introducing the org says, "will facilitate the creation of architecture, standards and best practices that will scale the infrastructure for online video and improve efficiency for all providers in the ecosystem while preserving a high quality experience for consumers."

The group will focus on three areas: open architecture, quality of experience and interoperability. Rayburn told Variety that the group is not a standards body. It will meet twice a year as a whole, with individual committees meeting more regularly to create proposals for technical specifications. These proposals will, in turn, be submitted to relevant standards bodies.

For more:
- read this Streaming Media Alliance press release
- read this Variety story

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