[Switzerland, Geneva, Jan.22, 2016] Huawei announced that the ITU-T standards committee meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, has accepted its recent work item proposals for the emerging video MOS, which assesses the overall video service experience.

The ITU-T SG12 plenary meeting adopted Huawei’s proposed ITU-T P.NATS phase2 demands of the project. Phase2 TOR (Terms of Reference) formed a finalized document. The project scope includes the video resolution of 4K, codec of H.264/265 and VP9. To include 4K signal as a subjective test reference signal will approximate upper limit demand of PPI/resolution for the human naked eye in a mobile scenario, thus laying the foundation for video MOS as an industry standard for video experience assessment.

Following the September 2015 meeting when the ITU-T P.NATS Standard Project (highest video resolution 1080P) was chosen as the video MOS objective standard for mobile scenarios, Huawei Wireless has been preparing for the P.NATS phase2 project. Based on preliminary mLAB mobile video MOS research results and current network application experience, the wireless department has presented more than 10 contributions during two meetings of the ITU-T SG12 in November 2015 and January 2016. These contributions elaborated and demonstrated possible questions and challenges from the perspective of industry demand, supporting theory, experimental feasibility, and similar experience in voice NB / WB / SWB series of standard.

Huawei standards and research experts proposed the necessity of the Phase2 project in the meeting. They elaborated on the definition of mobile scenario, the need of an evaluation model for 4K video in mobile scenario, and theory of 100ms waiting time for startup of video. Huawei also delivered the urgent need from the industry, and is highly valued by the participating vendors and operators.

During the meeting, Huawei also discussed in depth with representatives from the perspective of commercial and standard requirements. Huawei explained its thinking on standardization and demonstrated mLAB video experience based on its research results, the tool SpeedVideo. Huawei also shared its analysis of the relationship between network capability and commercial network video MOS score based on Big Data, winning high attention from vendors and operators. Meanwhile, Huawei also held open discussions between well-known network measurement service provider Rohde & Schwarz, Opticom, and also video content provider Netflix, to make clear their consideration on the standardization of video experience assessment.

For the next step, Huawei will act as an active contributor for the standards group, submitting subjective test data, reference models, and update of development of the industry, in order for the release of P.NATS phase2 standard as early as possible. ITU-T video MOS standardization will help provide a baseline for the industry to assess experience of videos, enable operators to timely know about end-user’s experience of network, do quick network optimization, and improve quality of network service.

NOTE: P.NATS (Parametric non-intrusive assessment of TCP-based multimedia streaming quality) is a non-intrusive parameteric evaluation model targeting for TCP based OTT streaming quality. (The project was approved in January 2014, and is expected to release Recommendation of Phase 1 in September 2016).