SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is delighted to honor the leadership and achievements of eminent multimedia pioneers and their contributions to the IMTC and IP Video Telephony industry.
“We look at the person, their contributions, and the impact of those contributions on the industry,” explained Anatoli Levine, IMTC President, and Director, Product Management for RADVISION. “IMTC is pleased to continue to recognize the extraordinary caliber of these individuals who have significantly influenced our industry, especially in multimedia research, development, standardization, education and management.”
IMTC presents its prestigious Leadership Award to Stephen L. Casner of Packet Design for his leadership in the creation of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) and his contributions to the multimedia industry. Mr. Casner has had a long-standing career in IETF work. His contributions and pioneering work to develop RTP led to the creation of the first and only real-time transport mechanisms for audio and video over IP in practical use. RTP is an integral part of widely deployed multimedia communications standards such as SIP and H.323, and the media transport of VoIP. He was the chairman of the Audio Video Transport Working Group (AVT) from its very first meeting in 1992 until 2003 when the last revision of RTP was published as RFC 3550. Shortly thereafter the same revision was approved as full IETF standard — a designation it shares with less than 100 other RFCs, including such prominent examples as IP, UDP, TCP.
Mr. Casner received his B.A. in Mathematics from Occidental College in 1973 and his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 1976. At USC's Information Sciences Institute, he designed and implemented protocols and software for some of the earliest experiments with packet voice using the ARPAnet beginning in 1974.
An IMTC Fellowship award is presented to Dr. Ralph Neff who has been involved with IMTC from the inception of the Packet-Switched Streaming Services (PSS) AG in 2001 and participated in several activities, most notably as chairman of the PSS AG from 2003 until 2010. He not only actively contributed to the IMTC PSS and 3G-324m AGs, but also importantly contributed, through a fruitful collaboration between the IMTC 3G-324m AG and ITU-T Q1/16, to the development of the MONA “call setup acceleration” algorithm, which became H.324 Annex K, for which Dr. Neff served as co-editor.
Dr. Neff received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994 and 2000, respectively. He is currently Director of Global Standards and Intellectual Property at PacketVideo Corporation.
IMTC also presented Service Awards to five long-standing Board Members and Officers: Brody Kenrick – OnMobile (formerly Dilithium Networks), Louise Olson – VGo (formerly with Polycom), Olle Franceschi - Ericsson AB, Shantanu Sarkar – Plantronics (formerly with Cisco), and Ari Heikkinen – PacketVideo. They all have provided outstanding service to the IMTC during their terms on the IMTC Board and have been enthusiastic supporters of IMTC Forums, SuperOps and other IMTC activities.
About the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC)
The IMTC is an industry-leading, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote and facilitate the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunication products and services based on open international standards. The IMTC hosts interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world. IMTC has hosted numerous events to test IMS, VoLTE, SIP, H.323, 3G-324M, TIP, 3G PS Streaming, and other Voice over IP products and services with each other. The IMTC Board of Directors includes representatives from AT&T, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Huawei, LifeSize Communications, Nokia, Polycom, Qualcomm, RADVISION and Vidyo. The San Ramon, California-based consortium comprises nearly 40 member organizations from around the globe. Membership is open to any interested party, including vendors of audio, document, and video conferencing hardware and software, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. “The IMTC is making Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime.” Further information on IMTC can be found at http://www.imtc.org.