Article from GigaOm.
Skyfire, which is trying to help carriers tame their runaway mobile data growth, has raised $10 million as it looks to take its data compression service global. The new money, which comes just nine months after raising $8 million from Verizon Ventures , brings Skyfire’s total funding to $41 million and will help Skyfire expand its footprint in Europe and Asia.
New investor Panorama Capital is leading the round with participation from existing investors Verizon Ventures, Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Skyfire’s Rocket Optimizer provides carriers with a network optimization platform that can produce 60 percent average data savings for videos and 50 percent for images. The company has been deploying Optimizer on the east coast with a Tier 1 carrier, providing video optimization for tens of millions of users. Photo and other multimedia optimization is expected to be added next year, Skyfire CEO Jeff Glueck told me earlier this month.
Glueck didn’t say which US carrier is using Skyfire but it’s a good bet that it’s Verizon. He did say that the US carrier will be rolling out Optimizer across its network early next year.
The big opportunity now is to take the product that’s been tested in the US to carriers in Europe and Asia. The company plans on using its new funding to build up its presence in Eastern Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia and Australia and add to its London and Silicon Valley offices. Glueck told me recently that Skyfire works for both 3G and LTE networks and is in trials with six or seven carriers. And in a statement, he said the issue is even more pressing for European carriers, who are seeing 85 percent of their LTE network bandwidth being used up by video.
“Data deluge is crushing mobile operators, straining the user experience, and squeezing operating margins,” said Glueck in a statement. “Our new funding lets Skyfiretake our proven technology in North America to new regions on a global scale.”
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