Multimedia (image, video, audio, etc.) enriches human’s daily life, and various multimedia services attract more and more users, such as multimedia message services, color rings, mobile TV, IPTV, User Generated Content (UGC), p2p sharing, etc. With the rapid development of communication technology, it becomes a reality to hear or watch anything, anywhere. For example, the convergence between Internet, digital TV and telecommunication (e.g., telephone, telegram, or mobile communication) pushes the development of TV services, such as interactive TV, IPTV, mobile TV, etc. The cloud computing techniques make it more and more attractive for remote users to work on one task together, e.g., collaborative drawing or writing. These innovative services are often constructed on novel communication or computing techniques. For example, scalable multimedia coding or transcoding are needed to adapt to heterogeneous networks, and intelligent multimedia analysis is often used to provide interactive or personalized recommendation. Additionally, some means are expected to protect security or privacy issues in communication or services. This special issue aims to expose the readership to the latest research results on innovative multimedia communication and services, especially in telecommunication systems. It includes a number of related topics, demonstrate pioneer