County Kerry, Ireland-headquartered Altobridge, a company that develops and deploys technology for mobile networks to help them cut the cost of delivering mobile voice and data, has announced that it’s raised a new $7.8 million round of funding from previous backers Intel Capital and International Finance Corporation (IFC).
The new funds will be used to “accelerate” the roll-out of its mobile data optimisation solution called “Data-at-the-Edge”, in urban and rural markets “globally”.
Both Intel Capital and IFC funded the company’s previous round Series C round of $12 million in early 2011.
Largely targeting emerging markets, although with potential to be applied more broadly, Altobridge’s offering caters for the wireless communications requirements of remote communities, enterprises and schools, through technology that claims to significantly reduce data bandwidth requirements on supporting mobile networks.
Dubbed “Data-at-the-Edge” or “DatE”, the technology is described as a “self-learning, content pre-positioning platform” and enables network operators to push down their data transmission costs and in turn improve the network experience of end users. Its functionality includes HTTP acceleration, in-line data and header compression, user data caching at the cell site, data traffic management and least-cost routing.
Since it’s C Round, Altobridge says that it’s seen DatE go from concept to “full commercialisation”, citing a rollout with Maxis Berhad, Malaysia’s largest integrated communications service provider, along with expanding rural connectivity in Indonesia, Malaysia, Iraq, Niger and Ghana. Meanwhile, it says that commercial trials for urban DatE deployment are pending with “leading network operators” in the U.S., Europe and North Africa.
