The Pragmatic Innovator

What’s the easiest way to publish rich media and video-based content to mobile devices? Introducing NetRover ePublisher!

It’s been a busy month over here at Opanga (as evidenced by the lack of blog posts!)  We’ve beenaccumulating record-breaking amounts of frequent flyer miles by trekking around the globe and meeting with savvy wireless operators who are searching for ways to alleviate the impact of mobile video on their networks, and on the homefront we’ve been busy growing our operations and working to protect our ever-expanding IP portfolio.  And last (but certainly not least!), we’ve been preparing for the launch of our new NetRover ePublisher platform!

We are very excited to have officially launched NetRover ePublisher, and with good reason – we strongly feel that this is the solution that operators have been searching for to help address the challenges surrounding the impact of mobile video on wireless networks.  You see, NetRover ePublisher is based on our patented NetRover technology, which transparently delivers large file video content using only surplus network capacity.  But in addition to being extremely network friendly, NetRover ePublisher also enables operators to provide consumers with the high quality mobile video they have been craving.

NetRover ePublisher accomplishes this by pre-positioning any form of rich media, e.g. video, text, images, audio, into the mobile device memory.  Pre-positioned content from subscription-based apps offers immediate and high-quality playback without freezing or buffering. Because the content is pre-positioned into device memory, the apps are always available, even when the device is offline.

We feel that NetRover ePublisher represents a tremendous advance in video delivery optimization technologies – by offering wireless operators and media companies a complete end-to-end media publishing platform that works outside data caps, we are providing them the tools that they need to thrive and succeed in today’s media-hungry world.

Instead of working against data caps, operators now have the tool they need to thrive within the cap.   As an example, wireless operators typically offer their consumers a monthly service plan that includes voice minutes, text and a data bucket (e.g. 500MB “cap” for $25). This data cap severely limits the amount of video that a consumer will view and consequently will reduce the value of video and associated advertising.

With NetRover ePublisher, this base plan can be augmented to add a number of NetRover-enabled “channels” that would not count towards the consumer’s monthly cap. This is only possible because of Opanga’s unique network friendly distribution technology, which also offers revenue growth that complements data caps or tariffs.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about data caps (see “Is AT&T’s new 150GB DSL data cap justified?” and the capacity crunch (see “Netflix Meets Its Kryptonite”), and we are so proud to be offering a platform that helps ease the burden of these challenges.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on our news!  Feel free to leave a comment or if you require an in-depth demo or briefing, shoot us an email at smarternetworks@opanga.com.

Off-Hour WiFi Offload: Capacity Crunch Silver Bullet?

There has been much discussion recently about the merits of off-hour WiFi offload.

As mentioned in this recent Computerworld article, “Sony, SanDisk and several other technology providers have formed a group and proposed a standard that would use predictive software to pre-load content onto mobile devices in order to preempt buffering issue due to bandwidth bottlenecks.”

Sounds promising, right?  But how exactly are these providers planning to “pre-load content?”  After digging a little bit deeper, it became apparent that they were planning to use a technique called off-hour WiFi offloading, which at first glance might seem comparable to content pre-positioning, which is utilized by our NetRover platform.

After a quick comparison, however, several significant differences between the two technologies emerge.  While both concepts aim to deliver content to a mobile device without burdening the network, consider the following:

• For off-hour WiFi offloading to work, there a multitude of requirements, including the availability of a WiFi network, the proper configuration of device settings and adequate smartphone battery life.
• In addition, latency is a significant issue as content cannot be delivered until the network provides a window of opportunity.  Many times, this means that content is not being delivered until the wee hours of the morning.
• Many wireless operators do not own WiFi networks. So selling consumers on new video-based services that require them not to work on their mobile networks is a hard sale. Wireless operators and consumers need media to work on 3G (and 4G) networks – not restrict it only to WiFi.

This stands in stark contrast to NetRover’s content pre-positioning technology, which “roves” the network day and night to identify and utilize surplus capacity.  In general, content pre-positioning is far more flexible than off-hour WiFi offloading as it is not dependant on WiFi and does not rely on a preconfigured schedule for content delivery.

Rather, content pre-positioning works on WiFi and 3G and continually works with the network to deliver content any time surplus capacity is identified.   No preconfigured schedule required.

We think users need mobile video delivery technologies that actually make life easier, not ones that mandate a plethora of requirements in order to work.  What do you think?

International CTIA Wireless 2011

Orange County Convention Center

Orlando, FL

March 22-24, 2011

To book an appointment to discuss NetRover at the show, please email smarternetworks@opanga.com

Digital Hollywood

Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel
Santa Monica, USA
May 3-6, 2011

Featured speaker: John Burnette, Director of Engineering

Content Delivery – Rich Media – Managing the Three Screen Challenge: PC, TV and Mobile

Thursday, May 5^th at 9:30 AM

To book an appointment to discuss NetRover at the show, please email smarternetworks@opanga.com