WiFi watchers will be interested to know that Birdstep is officially launching an ANDSF (Access Network Discovery and Selection Function) solution at CTIA Wireless on 21 May.
The EasyANDSF Policy Server solution is already in trials with “a leading North Amerian operator” according to Birdstep. Although Birdstep didn’t name the operator in question, in June 2012 Birdstep announced that it was providing is device connection software – EasySmart – to Sprint to provide traffic management for the operator.
The company will also launch EasyAnalytics at CTIA, a solution that will allow operators to analyse data flows and usage across WiFi and cellular access, and modify subscriber policy in the EasyANDSF policy server based on changing conditions of the network or usage characteristics. That would enable oprators to provide a “differentiated offload” capability, the operator said.
The company is on something of a roll on the back of its Sprint deal with Q1 revenues rising to more than 53% of 2012 levels. The commercial rollout of Sprint’s data offload project with EasySmart resulted in Birdstep’s highest activation rate per quarter to date, the company said. (Phase two of this project is now approved and commercially deployed.) Q1 revenues rose to more than 53% of 2012 levels.
Birdstep focuses on four areas; intelligent data onload and offload between cellu‐lar and Wi‐Fi, intelligent marketing capabilities, secure mobile communications and smart data analytics. It said that operators, especially in Europe, becoming increasingly interested in how they can ensure an optimal customer experience oce data has been offloaded.
“Our aim now is to help operators strike the optimum balance between data delivery costs and the customer experience. They will achieve this by making decisions about which applications and services they keep on the cellular network and which to offload to their Wi‐Fi network,” the company said.
Although it’s been codified for a while, ANDSF made something of a mark at MWC 2013, with demonstrations of VoLTE/Voice over WiFi handover from Telefonica enabled by an Ericsson ANDSF server, and of “policy on the device” capabilities from Tekelec.