Optimization Announcements: Onavo Offers "3rd Party" Compression Service

    

Onavo announced ".. an innovative new application, totally seamless and transparent. Once installed, you can go back to using your phone as normal. In the background, data usage from all apps is compressed, allowing users to double or even triple their existing data plan. Simply put, with Onavo, smartphone users can regain control of their data usage, understanding which apps are costing them and squeezing more out of every megabyte they download"

See "Onavo’s new app crunches data so users get more from their mobile" - here.

The company explains (here) that it works using an Onavo's cloud based server as a proxy server, and compresses downloaded (only) data  to Safari, Mail, Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter and other applications. The service, which is free for now, is going to be charged in the future.

Onavo's solution is a "3rd party" optimization solution and service. Similar solutions exist for long time from many optimization vendors (Bytemobile, Flash Networks, Vantrix, DiviNetworks, Mobixell), but require deployment by the operators (see an example here). As operators preferred to avoid the complexity of client based solutions, certain compression techniques (used by Onavo) could not be used, and optimization solutions are now focused on "one-sided" optimization of video content (which is not supported by Onavo).

Nevertheless, the company says that operators are "huge supporters of Onavo" however, unlike network based compression solutions operators may enjoy the congestion relief and less complaints to their help desks, but cannot charge customers for the actual volume consumed (hence the saving to the end-user).