P2P-Next, a pan-European conglomerate of 21 industrial partners, media content providers and research institutions, has received a €19 million grant from the European Union. The grant will enable the conglomerate to carry out a research project aiming to identify the potential uses of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology** for Internet Television of the future. The partners,* including the BBC, Delft University of Technology, the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, intend to develop a Europe-wide “next-generation” internet television distribution system, based on P2P and social interaction.

AG Projects launches its SIP Presence system based on SIP SIMPLE standards.

AG Projects has launched a set of Open Source software components needed for the implementation of scalable Presence services based on SIP SIMPLE suite of protocols. The software is available at http://openxcap.org while the free SIP service with Presence features is provided at http://sip2sip.info

NLNet foundation funds AG Projects initiative for the development of the first Open Source MSRP suite. Message Session Relay Protocol (MSRP) is a protocol for transmitting a series of related Instant Messages in the context of a session, which may be negotiated using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).