prominent in test & measurement. Data source fragmentation manifests as multiple vendors each offering different formats, proprietary APIs, varying update frequencies, and inconsistent metric definitions. Monitoring tools, analytics platforms, video QoE tools, and CDN providers each have their own interfaces and standards. At the protocol level, REST APIs are most common but lack consistency; there are many proprietary protocols and legacy systems. Even at the metric definition level, different vendors define fundamental concepts differently, calculations are inconsistent, and there’ s no unified standard. Fortunately, standards are emerging and gaining adoption. OpenAPI / Swagger is improving REST API consistency, CloudEvents provides a standard format for event data, and OpenTelemetry offers a unified framework for observability data. At the protocol level, MCP( and A2A) is standardising communication between AI agents. Our platform supports these emerging standards and is also advocating for unified video QoE metrics, standard device compatibility formats, and industry consortiums. Aprecomm: Fragmentation of service provision remains one of the major challenges
for today’ s service providers. With vast amounts of data flowing from numerous, often siloed sources, it can be difficult for different teams across an ISP business to identify and access the insights they need without lengthy, resource-intensive analysis. While a single universal standard for data management hasn’ t yet emerged, advances in agentic AI and cloud technologies are offering a practical way forward. By consolidating information into a unified data lake and enabling intelligent AI agents to query that data through a single interface, service providers can dramatically streamline access to actionable insights. Our latest AI agent, AIVRA, is designed to do exactly this— providing predictive analytics such as identifying when and why a customer is likely to churn. This empowers service providers to act proactively and deliver more responsive, data-driven customer experiences. Bitmovin: Fragmentation remains one of the biggest challenges in the test and
12 EUROMEDIA monitor space. Streaming ecosystems are highly diverse, spanning different devices, operating systems, players, and delivery networks, each producing slightly different telemetry. This variability makes it difficult to maintain consistent quality measurements and meaningful comparisons across services. Industry standards such as CMCD and DASH IF are helping to reduce these inconsistencies by promoting greater interoperability and standardised reporting across playback and delivery environments. From our experience, adopting frameworks like these delivers measurable improvements in visibility and accuracy, while commercial solutions can often help teams achieve those benefits faster by simplifying implementation and management. Bridge: Bridge Technologies’ tools have always been designed to span the full broadcast chain and operate seamlessly across hybrid and transitional networks- IP, satellite, cable, or terrestrial. Fragmentation is certainly a challenge for the broadcast operations themselves, who may benefit significantly from harmonising and streamlining what they do so that they are directing resources in multiple different directions, across multiple
different technologies. As more organisations migrate to fully IP-based setups, efficiency and cost-effectiveness will improve for most, and standards continue to evolve to support that shift. Interra: Yes, fragmented monitoring requirements across different stages of the broadcast and OTT workflows continue to pose significant challenges. Media and signals pass through multiple processing stages, each involving distinct systems, formats, and infrastructure components before reaching the end user. Ensuring visibility across this end-to-end chain means dealing with complex audio, video, and metadata streams, where quality parameters can vary widely. While some metrics are standardised, many remain specific to signal types, delivery networks, or proprietary platforms. In transport stream and OTT workflows, specifications such as TR 101 290 define parameters for transport-related integrity.
Leader: Fragmentation remains a significant issue, particularly as IP and hybrid infrastructures introduce multi-vendor interoperability challenges. Fortunately, organisations such as the SMPTE, AMWA, and EBU are driving strong progress in standardisation- notably around ST 2110, NMOS, and ST 2059 for timing and control. Leader’ s philosophy has always been to support open standards and transparent data exchange. The more harmonised the ecosystem becomes, the easier it will be for AI-enabled T & M tools to provide meaningful, system-wide insight. In summary, Leader Electronics believes AI will enhance, not replace, the engineer’ s role in broadcast test and measurement. The goal is smarter diagnostics, seamless integration between local and cloud systems, and a standards-based environment Torque: Any time you have a service split across multiple companies, organisations, or even departments of the same company, there will always be finger-pointing issues when identifying problems. Unlikely that will go away. As to any standards to fix that? Not that I’ m aware of at this time. VeEX: Yes, fragmentation still presents challenges, especially around network equipment interoperability. A good example is PON networks. Before ITU-T and IEEE standards for technologies like GPON, XGS- PON, EPON, and 10G EPON were established, PON networks were built based on unique service provider requirements, resulting in OLTs and ONTs being provisioned differently. Without the standards that we have today, most OLTs and ONTs would have trouble communicating with each other. Having standards has made interoperability much more obtainable. As the demand for higher speed increases, new standards in the 25G and 50G range are being developed to ensure networks operate seamlessly. Additionally, organisations like the Ethernet Alliance and Broadband Forum host interoperability‘ Plugfest’ events where member companies can test for real-world compatibility in shared lab environments. VIAVI: To achieve automation in a heterogeneous and fragmented API landscape for the O & M parts included in provisioning is a cost driver in the overall project. More than only a cost driver it is a bottleneck to move the projects swiftly forward as the resources required for this are in short supply and is shared by the teams working on the service design, provisioning and orchestration in the live network. Standards will simplify this, but in many cases the final O & M interfaces might not be ready at the time of the initial integration, or require substantial other subsystems that are not suitable to use in the early integration process.