Opera’s Skyfire adds audio optimization support to NFV-ready platform

Opera Software’s Skyfire division updated its Rocket Optimizer platform with a streaming audio optimization feature designed to help wireless operators handle the increasing amount of digital music content traveling across their networks.
The update taps into the network function virtualization-ready platform’s embedded mobile video traffic optimization capabilities to “automatically detect when the end user’s live audio stream is about to stall, buffer or drop off entirely due to a poor connection — in real time, before the problem starts.” The platform is designed to adapt the audio stream to fit the network speeds available to the customer.
Opera said the audio optimization is compatible with “most of the world’s most popular streaming music services, as well as with ‘long tail’ streaming content hosted on myriad websites,” as well as MP3 and MP4 stream formats. The update also can convert streams to the AAC+ codec, which Skyfire noted as a more efficient specification.
In connection with the announcement, Opera cited a recent study from Strategy Analytics that showed 77% of mobile users across the United States, China, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, listen to music on their mobile devices, with 70% claiming to do so at least once per week. The report added that 72% of those surveyed also said they use their mobile device to listen to music at least once per week when the service is bundled into their data plan.

“With devices getting smarter and networks getting faster, streamed music — like video — is rapidly growing in popularity among consumers, and operators need to prepare their networks to deliver the superior quality of experience that consumers expect,” explained Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire CEO and Opera SVP of operator products. “While audio is generally streamed at a lower bitrate than video, users often stream audio for hours at a time — consuming significant network bandwidth. Furthermore, quality assurance is hugely important, as users are extremely sensitive to stalling in audio streams.”
Domestic inclusion of streaming music services has been spearheaded by T-Mobile US, which earlier this year announced a partnership with Rhapsody to offer its UnRadio Internet radio service for free to T-Mobile US customers that are signed up for its unlimited data service. Customers on a capped data plan can access the service for $4 per month. T-Mobile US’ current data bucket policy is to throttle data speeds down to 2G or 3G speeds once customers reach their data allotment instead of cutting off service. The free streaming service is only available to customers when they are connected to T-Mobile US’ LTE network.
As part of that announcement, the carrier said it would no longer count cellular data used to tap into services offered by Pandora, Rhapsody, IHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, Spotify, and the soon-to-launch services from Samsung and SFX against a customer’s data bucket. T-Mobile US earlier this week added six more streaming music services to the offering, including AccuRadio, Black Planet, Grooveshark, Radio Paradise, Rdio and Songza.
Analysts noted that T-Mobile US was likely providing a significant amount of free data through the offering.
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