DF Raptor now part of the global standard(3GPP)
Digital Fountain's FEC Technology Selected as Global Standard for Reliable Broadcast of Multimedia to 3G Mobile Devices
FREMONT, Calif.--June 21, 2005--Digital Fountain, Inc., a leading supplier of FEC (forward error correction) technology for reliable communications, today announced that its patented DF Raptor?technology has been standardized by 3GPP, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, as a mandatory component of the Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) for 3rd generation (3G) cellular networks. By adopting DF Raptor as part of the MBMS standard for both streaming and file download services, 3G service providers and end users are assured of both the highest quality delivery of audio and video services and the fastest and most reliable data transfer.

Digital Fountain's DF Raptor is an advanced and highly flexible FEC technology that ensures the efficient and error-free delivery of both multimedia streams and data files even in the presence of a wide range of network impairments. MBMS employs multicast and broadcast transmission for bandwidth-hungry multimedia services so that many mobile devices can efficiently share common radio and network resources. By protecting MBMS signals from packet loss, DF Raptor enhances the overall user experience and assures the service provider that multimedia content will be delivered in its entirety without degradation.

In choosing DF Raptor as part of the 3GPP MBMS standard, its performance was compared to other alternatives in a rigorous evaluation process. DF Raptor, in comparison to other FEC options, makes optimal use of transmission bandwidth and imposes a minimal processing burden on the receiving devices in order to protect against a wide range of packet loss. With DF Raptor employed to guarantee error-free delivery, MBMS enables the wireless delivery of music videos, live sports events, and other revenue-generating multimedia services. "3GPP's decision to adopt DF Raptor as a mandatory part of the MBMS standard is a bold endorsement of our technology as the new international benchmark for FEC performance," said Charlie Oppenheimer, President and CEO of Digital Fountain. "The technical merits of DF Raptor convinced 3GPP members that our FEC technology is the best solution to flawlessly deliver both file download and multimedia streaming services."

3GPP is defining the future of 3G mobile communications for use around the world. Comprising various international standards bodies and industry associations as well as several hundred participating companies from around the world, 3GPP is chartered to prepare and maintain a complete set of globally applicable technical specifications for a 3G mobile system based on evolved GSM core networks and a variety of radio access technologies. Within that overall specification, 3GPP's MBMS standard aims to provide uniform and efficient delivery of rich multimedia content over 3G mobile networks to the latest multimedia-enabled cell phones and mobile devices.

"The success of future multimedia services over 3G networks will rely upon the quality of the content as seen by the end user," said Stefano Cantarelli, Director of Telecoms Systems, Vodafone UK. "We are pleased to see Digital Fountain's technology made part of every MBMS-enabled phone and network, ensuring that our subscribers around the world will receive the best-quality multimedia services."

Commented Frederic Gabin, 3G Standards Project Leader at NEC, "Digital Fountain's FEC provides the best of all worlds: low bandwidth overhead, low processing requirements for client devices, and effective protection of MBMS file transfer and streaming services from packet loss over 3G wireless channels."

About DF Raptor

Digital Fountain's DF Raptor represents the culmination of years of research by the company's world-renowned scientists, Dr. Michael Luby and Dr. Amin Shokrollahi. DF Raptor is an erasure correction technology, capable of correcting "missing" or "lost" data. By recovering lost data packets without requiring retransmission from the sender, DF Raptor efficiently and effectively provides reliability in data networks.

DF Raptor is able to generate a potentially limitless amount of encoded data from any original set of source data, thereby supporting extremes of low or high network loss as needed for a particular application. Unlike conventional FEC codes where the encoding and decoding calculations increase at an accelerating rate as the size of the source data or amount of loss protection increases, the processing requirements for DF Raptor increase only linearly with the amount of source data, making it highly scalable. As a result, DF Raptor can be implemented as lightweight software-based solutions for a variety of multimedia streaming and data transfer applications.

About Digital Fountain

Based in Fremont, California, Digital Fountain develops and licenses advanced FEC (forward error correction) technology to enhance the quality of communications over data networks. Digital Fountain's patented DF Raptor FEC technology improves multimedia streaming quality, ensures timely delivery of data, and enables the creation and development of new communications services. DF Raptor is used today in a variety of enterprise, military, and consumer devices and applications, supporting both wired and wireless telecommunications networks. For more information, visit Digital Fountain's Web site at www.digitalfountain.com.

   
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