Smith Micro Software is buying out its primary competitor in intelligent Wi-Fi offload. The California company is purchasing Birdstep’s software development and marketing arm for an undisclosed amount. Both Smith Micro and Birdstep help mobile operators offload traffic to Wi-Fi networks to ease network congestion.
“Birdstep has been our primary competitor in policy driven solutions designed to optimize the utilization of wireless networks,” said William W. Smith Jr., president and CEO of Smith Micro Software. “The acquisition brings trained resources and complementary technology to support the new customers we added at the end of 2015, and will continue to add in 2016.”
Smith Micro’s NetWise client uses policy-based algorithms to redirect mobile data traffic at the device level, and Birdstep offers a similar solution. Both companies offer operators ways to evaluate Wi-Fi network quality before shoveling traffic off the network indiscriminately.
“Offload is not a proposition, it’s not a solution, it’s a use case,” said Birdstep CEO Lonnie Schilling, speaking to RCR Wireless News’ Kelly Hill at Super Mobility Week 2014. Schilling said in North America, Birdstep was a pioneer in selective, intelligent redirection of mobile traffic as opposed to wholesale offload. Like the NetWise client, Birdstep’s solution can evaluate the reliability of a Wi-Fi network as well as the bandwidth demands of the user’s application.
“If I’m using cellular at any given point in time and the business logic that is handed down to our software on the handset in the form of rules would dictate that the service should move from cellular to Wi-Fi based on the application type being run, location, time of day, or quality of the network that we’re measuring, we ensure that when that handoff occurs, it only occurs when the new service – in this case Wi-Fi – is capable of supporting that application, that service level,” Schilling said.
Birdstep, which is based in Stockholm, Sweden, had sales of roughly $6.8 million last year, according to Smith Micro. Smith Micro, which is a public company, had sales of $39 million for the year ended Sept. 30, 2015.
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