Path 1, SAIC Join Forces In Internet Video Venture
PacketVideo Tunes Up ‘Cellular TV’ Product
High Tech
by Brad Graves, Staff Writer
Sending video by Internet is the specialty of Path 1 Network Technologies, a 55-employee company with principal offices in University City.
The capability, called Video Over Internet Protocol, has been a Holy Grail for broadband carriers. For the longest time people were unable to do it, said Path 1 CEO Frederick Cary.
“We pulled it off,” Cary said.
That has stirred interest at Science Applications International Corp., a 40,000-employee company with talents in all sorts of technology, offices around the globe, and headquarters nearby on Torrey Pines Mesa. The companies last week announced joint plans to create and deploy Internet Protocol networks that can deliver real-time, broadcast quality video , not to mention other Internet traffic.
The partnership will target broadcasters, governments (including the military), schools and universities, both in the United States and Canada.
Representatives of both companies said SAIC gets to broaden its menu of services while Path 1 gets an ally in a Fortune 500 company.
Excluding consultants, Path 1 has 27 employees in San Diego and 28 employees at its wholly owned Romanian subsidiary, Sistolic.
Local residents may have seen the fruits of Path 1’s technology already.
On top of all the other damage, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks reduced communications bandwidth in the northeastern United States. CNN, which had been testing Path 1’s technology, decided to hurry it to market.
As a result, Cary said, people who saw live news coverage from the Northeast on Sept. 12 or afterward likely saw video streamed over the Internet with Path 1’s know-how.
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Take Three: “Carrier class” means rugged enough and reliable enough for telecom carriers to use in their systems.
That’s the label San Diego-based PacketVideo Corp. has put on the new, Version 3 of its multimedia products.
Multimedia is sometimes called “cellular TV.”
PacketVideo has been working on a system to deliver streaming video, animation and other media through the air to the antennas and tiny screens of cell phones.
The company introduced its new software in mid-February at a trade show in Cannes, France. The pv3 family of products includes an encoder, a server and a player. The latter goes in handsets.
PacketVideo named five carriers in Europe and Asia that are testing their new release. Carriers on those continents may launch the system by year’s end. A U.S. launch will come later.
Close to 50 carriers are testing Version 2, said Dann Wilkens, vice president of marketing and carrier services at PacketVideo.
PacketVideo has 260 employees and is working from its Series E venture capital round.
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Instant Fraud Alert: HNC Software Inc., the San Diego-based company making products that spot credit card fraud, has announced software that will contact a cardholder quickly when it spots a suspicious transaction.
The contact could come via wireless phone, e-mail, pager, short message service or fax.
Cardholders will be able to reply to the message to verify the transaction is legitimate. Alternately, they will be able to get in touch with a fraud investigation agent.
The company has teamed up with Toronto-based 724 Solutions Inc. and Stamford, Conn.-based Adeptra Inc. to offer the service. HNC has identified two other potential partners, CEO John Mutch said during a conference call last week.
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For Fender Menders: Small-time auto body shops and insurance adjusters nationwide have gone to the Web to find an improved Version 1.5 of Mitchell International’s estimate-writing software.
Mitchell keeps its data center in San Diego and charges clients according to how many estimates they write.
Meanwhile, a rival collision-repair software and services company , Automatic Data Processing, Inc. of San Ramon , announced last week it has spent millions to improve its client service call centers. ADP is the same company that handles paychecks.
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Columnar Components: Qualcomm Inc. ranks 28th nationally in work force training. So says Training Magazine, which considers the price tag as well as the other qualities of the programs. Top trainers are Pfizer Inc. and IBM. The U.S. Army is conducting R & D; with sound wave technologies from American Technology Corp. of San Diego.
Send high-tech news to Graves via e-mail at
bgraves@sdbj.com
or via fax at (858) 571-3628.
