New SEVEN Solution Optimizes Mobile Apps Traffic and Cuts Device Data Consumption by 70%

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SEVEN^® Networks, a provider of solutions for Real Life, Real Time mobile lifestyles, today announced SEVEN Open Channel™ a breakthrough mobile traffic optimization solution that cuts the data consumption of smartphones and other mobile devices by up to 70 percent.

“The intelligence of the Open Channel solution to know what is occurring in the operator’s network as well as with updates to a smartphone application and/or social networking service means that SEVEN’s new platform is uniquely positioned to single-handedly address these challenges while maximizing an operator’s available network resources.”

Open Channel works by monitoring all requests for data made by the mobile apps and only connecting to the network if new updates are available. Currently, applications like Facebook, email, Twitter, IM, weather and others randomly send hundreds of these requests daily consuming significant network bandwidth and signaling resources.

Tests of the Open Channel solution show that by eliminating the unnecessary requests it can reduce the time the device is on the network by 40 percent without impacting the user experience. This translates into a data traffic reduction of up to 70 percent and an increase in battery life by up to 25 percent without application or network changes.

Open Channel is transparent to connected applications and requires no changes or special integration by mobile developers. It also requires no changes to the network and can work in conjunction with new standards for fast network dormancy, smart signaling and other network optimizations, further enhancing the value and longevity of these investments.

The first version of the software is compatible with Android handsets and is now in tier-1 carrier trials in the U.S. and Europe. This innovative solution has been nominated to the 2011 Technology Breakthrough award by the GSMA and will be featured at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2011.

“In most instances, 3G network congestion is largely the result of smartphones or their applications making frequent and often unnecessary connections to the network,” commented Michael Thelander, Founder and CEO of Signals Research Group, LLC. “The intelligence of the Open Channel solution to know what is occurring in the operator’s network as well as with updates to a smartphone application and/or social networking service means that SEVEN’s new platform is uniquely positioned to single-handedly address these challenges while maximizing an operator’s available network resources.”

“Push has become one of the primary methods of controlling unneeded traffic on the mobile Internet, but push alone can be as harmful to the network as polling solutions,” said Michael Luna, SEVEN chief technical officer. “With Open Channel’s ability to manage data intelligently, using intelligent push and structured polling, wireless carriers now have an easy-to-deploy alternative that improves data delivery response and dramatically extends the useful life of today’s network infrastructure.”

“Open Channel does for the Mobile Internet what content delivery networks did for the wired network – work with the existing infrastructure to provide scalability to handle massive data loads,” said Ross Bott, president and CEO of SEVEN. “This is an exciting new business direction for SEVEN Networks, one that leverages our technology expertise, but that also takes us into an exploding new market.”

Users of smartphone, and tablet devices are the biggest data consumers, with some heavy users consuming up to 300 MB of data per month, according research by Nielsen. Much of this is driven by network connected mobile apps. Every time a device polls the network with no response, it has to turn on its radio – drawing power and contributing to network congestion – for nothing. Wireless carriers are discovering that congestion issues from all of these polling requests can have a bigger impact on their networks than high data throughput levels.

SEVEN Open Channel is built on the company’s proven SaaS platform and includes device software as well as a server. The device software works together with the server to coordinate and manage all of the data being sent to the device.

SEVEN Networks has tested Open Channel on various Android 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 devices on EVDO and UMTS networks using a mix of popular social and information applications such as Twitter, Facebook, ESPN and weather applications.

The industry has addressed the congestion challenge with various solutions including fast dormancy, which speeds up a device’s channel acquisition set up and teardown process. Open Channel augments these technologies because it keeps the radio turned off thus reducing the number of times the device needs to signal the network.

For more information, go to www.seven.com, or follow SEVEN on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SEVEN_Networks.

About SEVEN

Founded in 2000, SEVEN Networks helps carriers and handset manufacturers deliver a Real Life, Real Time™ mobile experience through its push-based software platform and applications that deliver data to devices in a way that is network efficient. Its SEVEN Open Channel™ is a breakthrough mobile traffic optimization software solution that cuts the data consumption of smartphones and mobile devices by up to 70 percent. SEVEN’s flagship application, push email, and its underlying platform are in production in 14 languages across the five continents, and support more than 800 device models across eight operating systems. More information is at www.seven.com.