Mushroom Networks Advances Technology for Live Field Broadcasts

When I profiled San Diego’s Mushroom Networks last June, the venture-backed developer of “broadband bonding” technology had just introduced Teleporter, a hardware package that enables a broadcast journalist to send high-quality digital video over local cellular networks. One year later, the company says its Teleporter technology is now available with HD capability. Mushroom Networks says that makes Teleporter the first cellular-based high-definition live video streaming technology with the ability to transmit high-quality and low-latency video suitable for television broadcasting.

Mushroom Networks says it’s also a breakthrough for video content providers because it eliminates the need for TV news crews to use expensive satellite or microwave connections. Using a Teleporter device, a TV crew can instead deliver real-time HD video from any location where cellular broadband service is available.

In a statement from the company, Mushroom Networks co-founder and CEO Cahit Akin says, “Teleporter is the technological answer broadcasters have been waiting for.” But is it technology that station managers are willing to buy? I can’t think of too many news operations that aren’t hurting and looking for ways to cut costs. Still, trying to displace established technology can be challenging unless the innovation can be easily adopted and poses obvious advantages.

But Akin points out that broadcasters aren’t the only prospective customers. The company says a cost-effective means for transmitting live HD video opens the door for anyone who wants to create and distribute live video content—from bloggers to Homeland Security officers along the U.S. border.

The company’s core technology involves something called “broadband bonding,” and enables a customer to connect all of the Internet sources that might be available—DSL, cable, T1, wireless, satellite, and MPLS-and combine them into a single, virtual broadband pipe.

Teleporter allows the transmission of live video by utilizing the combined throughput of multiple cellular data cards from a combination of carriers. So for example, the technology can utilize the full bandwidth of Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint “bonded” together to broadcast live news from the field using any video camera. The company says its technique is superior to load-balancing and similar solutions, which can have long delays, high latency or not enough total bandwidth.

I’m interested in what people think about this technology, so let me know in the comment section below.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.