(16 September 2005 4:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Aylus Networks (ANW) a US based company today announced setting up its global R&D center in Bangalore. The engineers in the Bangalore center and Massachusetts, USA, will work in tandem to build Mobility Management switch solutions that will enable service providers to deliver mobile broadcast T V/Video and multimedia services across multiple access networks.

ANW is confident that the product will be available for deployment early October next year.

ANW has raised $10 million from two premier venture capital firms, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners during the first round. The money raised will be utilised for technology development in India as well as the US.

"Wireless operators as well as cable operators are looking into providing mobile TV and content over dedicated mobile TV broadcast networks and over 3G networks to hand held devices. At the same time, convergence between wireless, wireline and cable operators is demanding technology that can span across various access networks, e.g., 2.5G/3G, Cable networks, DSL networks, WiFI , WiMax and mobile broadcast TV networks, to provide uniform multimedia services. Aylus Mobility management switch will enable the providers to offer high definition TV, content and multimedia services across all networks," said ANW president and CEO Mahesh Ganmukhi.

Mobile content is the next technology wave. Some examples of the mobile contents are video clips of sports events, news, TV shows and movies. There are three screens available for content to subscribers today - TV, PC and mobile hand held devices. So far the content was available over TV and PC. Now the demand for content on the “Third Screen”, the screen of a mobile hand held device, is growing rapidly by the mobile subscribers.

As per ANW, there are over 1.8 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide today and this number is expected to grow to three billion by 2010. These subscribers would like to have mobile content along with current voice service.

ANW estimates put the world wide market size for services providers in Broadcast TV and Video over hand held devices is estimated to grow to 250 million subscribers by 2010 to generate over $27 billion and market of mobile virtual network operators is pegged to grow to 76 million subscribers to generate $25 billion.