China Telecom will go ahead with trials of the domestically-developed AVS standard for IPTV, the company confirmed yesterday at the Broadband World Forum in Beijing.
CTO Wei Leping said the video codec was one of the biggest technical problems facing the development of IPTV.
"China Telecom will start to develop its own AVS codec," he said, referring to the China-developed audio-visual coding standard.
Rival China Netcom has been using AVS in a trial in Dalian in the country's northeast. The technology is a possible replacement for the H.264 codec.
Wei added that IPTV networks also faced questions of scalability and QoS. However, the biggest issue was the regulatory barriers, he said, adding that he hoped they would be removed "in the next few months".
"It will become the major growth path if deregulation happens. If not, that is another story."