With its stake in Clearwire and hopes of using dedicated femtocell spectrum to deliver content, major US cable operator Comcast is putting its mobile broadband strategy together rapidly now after years of hesitation. Some of its approaches are highlighted by its latest investment, in a start-up just coming out of stealth mode, and specializing in all-IP mobile content delivery.
Massachusetts-based Cartiza has gained a $12.6 million round of financing from Comcast Interactive Capital and some other significant capital movers, Prism VentureWorks and the Business Development Bank of Canada.
The company is vague so far about the specifics of its Mobile Content Delivery System, beyond saying it can be mixed and matched with other network elements to create an end-to-end system for managing and personalizing multimedia, voice, data and video applications. It will offer a single family of integrated boxes, each combining most of the network elements between the airlink and core, to reflect the shift to flat networks, and with the box sitting at the network edge. The architecture will support various mobile broadband networks, including WiMAX (it is a member of the WiMAX Forum, and with Comcast’s interest, its key initial target will clearly be a foot in the Clearwire initiative).
Cartiza claims to be contributing to the operator’s biggest challenge, making the user experience really friendly. It is particularly focused on the ability to personalize services to individuals or households, maintaining this tailored experience and user interface consistently across mobile and other devices; and on supporting a wide range of differentiated service classes. In particular, as well as all-IP, it cites end-to-end application awareness, deep packet inspection and policy-based queuing as the most important enabling technologies for personalization, and for helping operators to add or remove services as market preferences change.