Friday, September 16 2005 14:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: US-based Alyus Networks Inc today (Sept 15, 2005) announced setting up its global R & D center in Bangalore, which it said would be the nerve center for building mobility management switch solutions that would enable service providers to deliver mobile broadcast TV/video and multimedia services across multiple access networks.

The product, to be developed by the engineers here in tandem with the firm's techies in Massachusetts in the US, would be available for deployment early of October next year, the company's President and CEO Mahesh Ganmukhi told reporters here.

Aylus, founded by Ganmukhi, who holds 23 US patents, and Shamim Naqvi, CTO, has raised US$ ten million from venture capital firms, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. The money raised would be utilized for technology development.

Ganmukhi said the Bangalore center, for which the company will hire 25 engineers by the end of this year, will focus on the product development work and will encompass quality assurance and testing lab.

The company believes mobile content is the next technology wave. Some examples of the mobile contents are video clips of sports events, news, TV shows and movies. The demand for content on the screen of a mobile hand-held device is growing rapidly.

According to company executives, there are over 1.8 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide today and this number is expected to grow to three billion by 2010. These subscribers would like to have mobile content with current voice service.

Ganmukhi, who has previously worked at firms including Cereva Networks, Ignitus Communications, Ascend Communications and Cascade Communications, said wireless operators as well as cable operators are looking into providing mobile TV and content over dedicated mobile TV broadcast networks and over 3G networks to hand-held devices.

But at the same time, it was noted, convergence between wireless, wire line and cable operators is demanding technology that can span various networks 2.5/3G, cable networks, WiFi, WiMax and mobile broadcast TV networks, to provide uniform multimedia services.

"Aylus Mobility Management Switch will enable the service providers to offer mobile TV, content and multimedia services across all networks", Ganmukhi said.