Starhub selects Mobixell

Mobixell Networks announced today that it has been selected by Singapore's Starhub. Mobixell will deploy its Seamless Access gateway to perform intelligent traffic management, advertising insertion and video optimization.


Liong Hang Chew, Assistant Vice President of Mobile Network Engineering at StarHub said, “We chose Mobixell Seamless Access to enable a new era of mobile data traffic handling, increasing efficiency and improving customer experience. At the same time, implementing Seamless Access will enable future services such as content security and other possible revenue-generating features."


The deal was won almost a year ago, in the summer of 2010.

MTS Russia selects Flash Networks

The deal was won last year, after a RFP shortlisting 4 major vendors. A trial in Murmansk followed the selection of Flash Networks. The solution is being deployed commercially and will be live at the end of 2011.


This is the first major announcement from Flash Networks in the video optimization space, confirming the conversion and acquisition of some of their customers from web optimization to video optimization.

“Using the data optimization platform allows us to reduce our mobile network data transmission load by almost 40% and our transit load by 30%, ultimately resulting in faster Internet speeds and better quality of data services for our users”said Sergei Stepanyuk, Head of Data Transmission Department at MTS. 


full release here.

Dear Openwave, Juniper is now partnering with RGB Networks

In a solution brief stealthily released this week, Juniper introduces RGB Networks VMG transcoder product within its Media Flow solution as their partner for adaptive streaming.

This solution brief, centered around mobile video delivery uses a lot of the rhetoric associated with mobile TV and TV everywhere, touting computational performance and low heat dissipation for instance. The solutions seems to be addressed at carriers, content owners, cable operators who want to enable their own mobile CDN, rather than relying on Akamai and Limelight.
It is not surprising since it is, after all, RGB's core competency, to extend professional video encoding from cable to mobile networks. Hardware based, high performance adaptive streaming and its three proprietary flavors (Apple's, Microsoft's and Adobe's) seem to be the core of the solution. That is, until their acquisition of Ripcode last year which yielded, beyond a handful of wireless customers and a software based solution, the embryo of video optimization  technology for OTT traffic.




What I find interesting, is that the same solution from Juniper, Media Flow was supposed to be as well the core of the Openwave - Juniper partnership around video optimization announced at Mobile World Congress this year. 
If you remember the press release at the time, "Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) has selected the Company [Openwave] as a strategic partner to integrate its Media Optimizer into Juniper’s Media Flow solution for mobile video optimization".


We all have seen Openwave's struggle to convince the market that they indeed have technology in this space, after over 30 announced trials and customer engagements and only Wattanya Maldives to show as an announced customer in the space.


At the same time, RGB Networks has made many inroads in licensing and OEMing its technology to core networks, VAS and optimization vendors to perform transcoding, not in the mobile TV/mobile CDN space, but for video optimization. Several vendors in the space have embedded their transcoder in their solution.




Reading between the lines, I can't help but think that Juniper might be thinking of RGB as an anchor technology partner for their Media Flow solution. It makes sense to consolidate both the video delivery for on-deck content announced here with the video optimization for OTT content with a single technology partner. At that point, RGB has a lot more references and technology than Openwave.


 I would not be surprised if Openwave's partnership with Juniper was at its end, whether it will be officially acknowledged or not, only 6 months after its announcement.

Mobile video 102: lossless and lossy compression

Mobile video as a technology and market segment can at times be a little complicated.

Here is simple syllabus, in no particular order of what you need to know to be conversant in mobile video. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to be very detailed, but rather to provide a knowledge base for those interested in understanding more the market dynamics I address in other posts.

Compression (lossless) and optimization (lossy)

• Compression is the action of reducing the size of the representation of a media object without loosing data. It is lossless when, after decompression, a compressed media is absolutely equal to the original. Compression methods are based on statistical analysis, to represent recurrent data items within a file. PNG, GIF, Zip, gzip and deflate are lossless compression formats. Throttling, just-in-time delivery and caching are lossless delivery methods.
• Optimization is a form of compression called lossy in the sense that it discards data elements to achieve reduced size. The optimized version is not identical to the original. Transcoding, transrating are lossy methods.

Lossy optimization methods:

• Frame per second (fps): A video is composed of  a number of still frames (pictures). The illusion of movement is achieved after 15 frame per second. TV is 24 to 30 fps (depending on the standard and whether it is progressive or interlaced). Many lossy optimization method will reduce the frame per second ratio in order to reduce the size of a file.
• key frame: Not all frames contain the same amount of data in video optimization. The main way to reduce the quantity of information in a video is to use statistical analysis to predict motion. In other words, analyse differences between one frame to the following. Most optimization method will model only the difference between a frame and the next one, therefore not coding all the information. Key frames or Intra frames are the frames used as reference. When lossy optimization is performed using fps reduction, one has to be careful not to remove the key frames or the user experience will be garbled with many artifacts.
• Bit rates: Bit rate is the rate at which a video is encoded (quality) or transmitted. 
• Encoding bit rate:The encoding bit rate represent the amount of information that is captured in each frame. It is measured in kbps or (kilobit per second) Mbps (Megabit per second). HD video is encoded at 20Mbps, SD at 10 Mbps, internet video usually around 1Mbps and video transmitted on wireless between 200 and 700 kbps.
• Variable bit rate (VBR) or transrating is a lossy optimization method that will vary the encoding bit rate throughout the video to take into account lossy network conditions.
• Constant bit rate is used for broadcast, fixed line connection and generally lossless transmissions.
• Delivery bit rate: When a video is transmitted over a wireless network, the connection capacity dictates the user experience. The bit rate of delivery should always exceed the bit rate of encoding of the video for smooth viewing. If the delivery bit rate goes below the encoding bit rate, buffering, stop and go is experienced. Lossy optimization techniques such as VBR allow to reduce the encoding bit rate in real time, as the delivery bit rate varies.
• Transcoding is the action of decoding a video file and recoding it under a different format. This lossy method is effective to reduce a video file from a definition, format that are not suitable for mobile transmission (HD, 3D...). Additionally, a lot of size saving can be operated by changing the aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9 from TV) or changing the picture size (HD 1080 is 1920 x 1080 pixels, while most smartphones WVGA are 800 x 480 pixels). You can reduce drastically a video file size by changing the picture size.
• Transprotocol is the action to change the protocol used for video transmission. For instance, many legacy phones that do not support progressive download cannot access internet video unless they are transprotocoled to RTSP.