India’s FastFilmz taps V-Nova to deliver OTT to 2G phones

Indian OTT provider FastFilmz has tapped compression specialist V-Nova’s Perseus platform to provide mobile video to 2G networks.

The FastFilmz service launched last week and is targeting India’s 120 million Tamil speakers.

V-Nova claims to be able to support the delivery of SD quality video at sub-audio bit-rates of less than 128kbps, making the delivery of a video service over 2G networks possible for the first time. According to the technology company, its Perseus compression platform will enable FastFilmz to provide video over the 2G network that 70% of consumers in its target region use for internet access, as well as 3G users.

FastFilmz has secured deals with local content providers and is offering simple low-cost packages through distribution partners including Aircel. The service is available for free for a two-week trial period and for the promotional price of INR10 (€0.13) a week or INR30 a month for a limited period.

The company claims on its website to be able to stream a movie using 150MB of data as against over 600MB on other services.

“The deployment of the world’s highest performing video compression technology, V-Nova Perseus, has enabled FastFilmz to launch the first subscription video service built for consumers who are mobile bandwidth-constrained. At the same time, we are able to halve the data costs of streaming and downloading movies, which is a huge deal for our target market,” said Dominic Charles, joint-CEO and co-founder of FastFilmz.

Karam Malhotra, joint-CEO and co-founder of FastFilmz said: “Without V-Nova Perseus, our streaming service could have only reached a maximum audience of the 30 million people having 3G access. With V-Nova Perseus advanced compression, we are able to reach both 2G and 3G users, increasing our potential customer base by 4 times to over 120 million subscribers.”