Here at Sandvine, we are recognized industry leaders.  We’re excited to work in a rapidly-evolving market segment that poses countless complex problems in need of innovative solutions, and we’re proud of our track record for contributing to our industry’s technological advancement and thought leadership.  We are consistently investing in developing leading-edge technology for global ISPs, and we even continued to invest heavily during recent economic downturns, believing that future success is predicated on present investment. We invest more money in R&D than any of our competitors… in fact, we invest more in R&D than our two largest competitors combined!

On the thought leadership front, Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena program, reporting on Global Internet usage trends since 2002, is widely regarded as the pre-eminent source of information about fixed and mobile consumer Internet trends. For instance, we have revealed that more than half of all Real-Time Entertainment traffic in the United States is being driven by consumer devices like game consoles and smart TVs, and that the Playstation 3 alone accounts for more than a quarter of Netflix traffic (see the Netflix Rising spotlight).

Back in the early days, we were called heretics for announcing that P2P traffic was the dominant form of traffic on the Internet when everyone otherwise believed it to be email and Web surfing.  Sandvine is used to a bit of controversy and we take it all in stride.  Why?  Because we build on our real-world experiences to design products that bring the highest value to our customers, and we’ll continue to out-innovate our competition. Read the rest of this entry »

Record numbers of attendees gathered last week in Paris for Broadband World Forum Europe.  As always, we at Sandvine were part of the exhibition floor and this year we were excited to showcase our recently announced Real-Time Entertainment Dashboard and Usage Management 4.0.

Sandvine’s Real-Time Entertainment Dashboard is revolutionary because it provides business intelligence particularly relevant to streaming content (Netflix, YouTube and Spotify), including measurements regarding the quality of the video experience, the viewing duration, and the associated revenue generated by the adoption of over-the-top services. Our Usage Management 4.0 product helps both fixed and mobile service providers create, manage and implement new product offerings.

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Since early this year, Time Warner Cable (TWC) and content programmers have been embroiled in a legal battle over an app that allowed TWC subscribers to watch TV live on their iPad. Content programmers feel the app distributes their content without an appropriate license, while TWC feels it is within their rights of their broadcast agreement.

The court case is still ongoing, but in an interesting move last month, TWC announced that they will offer subscribers a free Slingbox to their highest Internet tier known as Wideband.  For those that don’t know, Slingbox is a device that allows you to stream your cable or satellite set-top box remotely to any computer, tablet, or smartphone connected to the Internet.

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A few weeks ago Facebook and Skype announced a partnership to offer free video calling to Facebook users.  These two tech heavyweights, Skype with over 600 million active users, and Facebook with over 750 million, have the potential to make a significant impact, not only in the way people communicate, but also in the Internet consumption habits of users.

The killer application in this partnership is the ease of use.  With this implementation, neither the originating nor the receiving party need to have created a Skype account in order to make a video call, since a button will be installed on every user’s Facebook profile. With Facebook claiming that the average user has over 130 friends, and that half of users access Facebook each day, it is easy to see how this new feature could explode in popularity.

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