3 Hong Kong uses Novarra to deliver mobile video service

By Giselle Abramovich
and Mickey Alam Khan

January 30, 2008

Jayanthi Rangarajan, president/CEO of Novarra

Mobile Web platform developer Novarra Inc. recently partnered with 3 Hong Kong to make mobile video available to the carrier’s customers.

3 Hong Kong customers can now select and watch videos from the Web using their mobile phones.  They can turn Web videos into mobile-compatible formats via Novarra’s Vision Media server that offers access to the Web, PC-quality video experience and a reduction in network bandwidth.

“The vision that 3 has and that [Novarra customer] Vodafone UK has is that once you enable the Internet you can participate in the economies around the Internet,” said Jayanthi Rangarajan, president/CEO of Novarra, Chicago. “There’s a whole new contextual advertising opportunity. It gives you a dimension to give you more targeted advertising.”

The deal comes months after Internet giant Yahoo said it had selected Novarra’s Vision server version 6.5 platform to offer Web transformation for Yahoo’s oneSearch service for mobile. When users click on a link to a Web site in a Yahoo oneSearch result, Novarra’s technology adapts the site for the mobile phone.

Novarra’s services include full Web and mobile search for mass-market phones and fancy wireless devices.

Mobile consumers can use the Novarra service while watching any video on social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The video service is included in the new 3Xplorer 2.0 package, available in the United States in the next couple of weeks.

Novarra’s Vision Media server transforms video content from any PC format to industry-standard mobile formats. It also optimizes for the device and media player capabilities.

The service adapts to video encoding rates for good quality based on available network bandwidth, too.

“People talk about the Internet on the iPhone,” Ms. Rangarajan said. “This is the Internet on every phone. We’ve developed server-based technology that makes it possible to deliver the Internet in six to eight seconds down to the average phone.”