Digital Fountain FEC Technology Standardized For DVB-H Mobile Devices.

FREMONT, Calif. -- Digital Fountain, Inc., the world's pre-eminent supplier of FEC (forward error correction) technology for reliable communications, announced today that its patented DF Raptor(TM) technology has been made part of the global standard to support content delivery services over DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld) wireless networks. As the standard for the reliable delivery of files to DVB-H mobile devices, DF Raptor FEC technology allows network operators to provide fast, cost-effective, and reliable content distribution, benefiting both end users and service providers.

The adoption of DF Raptor technology for DVB-H follows its standardization earlier this year as part of the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service) specification for GSM-based 3G cellular networks. Because the DF Raptor FEC provides exceptional packet loss protection but can be readily supported by general-purpose processors, the technology is ideally suited for the delivery of multimedia content to mobile wireless devices.

Digital Fountain's DF Raptor technology is an advanced and highly flexible type of FEC that enables the efficient and error-free download of multimedia data files in the presence of a wide range of network impairments. By employing DF Raptor FEC as part of IP datacasting services over DVB-H to protect against packet loss, DVB-H service providers and end users can be assured that multimedia content will be delivered complete and error-free in a minimum amount of time across a wide coverage area.

"The DF Raptor technology will reduce the network broadcast time required to deliver files to subscribers, allowing us to deliver more content with the same amount of infrastructure," said Erik Stare, Senior Research Engineer at Teracom AB, Sweden's national broadcast agency. "Moreover, the technology enlarges the coverage area for reliable reception, leading to greater user satisfaction."

The DF Raptor FEC was standardized as part of the specifications for IP datacasting and content delivery protocols developed by the Convergence of Broadcast and Mobile Services (CBMS) working group of the Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB). DVB is an industry-led consortium of over 270 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies, and other entities in over 35 countries committed to designing international standards for the global delivery of digital television and data services.

Within DVB, DVB-H is an open industry standard for the delivery of mobile broadcast digital services to handheld devices. DVB-H has already generated significant industry activity, including technical and commercial trials, a range of product launches, and several planned network rollouts around the world.

Commented Charlie Oppenheimer, President and CEO of Digital Fountain: "We deeply appreciate this endorsement from the DVB community. Both 3GPP and DVB have now recognized the value of DF Raptor technology for broadcast and multicast systems, and we believe that DF Raptor FEC will become the choice for all major broadcast architectures under development."

As multiple standards organizations, including 3GPP, DVB, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), adopt similar architectures for the broadcast/multicast of multimedia content, Digital Fountain is working to accelerate the development of standards-compliant servers and mobile receivers. In addition to supplying optimized OS-independent implementations of the DF Raptor FEC, Digital Fountain now offers developers, manufacturers, and network operators the Digital Fountain(TM) File Delivery Engine and the Digital Fountain(TM) Streaming Engine as software implementations of the fundamental file download and streaming media protocols.

About DF Raptor FEC Technology

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

DF Raptor FEC codes are 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 codes increase only linearly with the amount of source data, making them highly scalable. As a result, DF Raptor technology can be implemented as lightweight software-based solutions for a variety of multimedia delivery applications.

About Digital Fountain

Based in Fremont, California, Digital Fountain develops and licenses advanced FEC (forward error correction) technology and software implementations 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 FEC is used today in a variety of enterprise, military, and consumer devices and applications, supporting both wired and wireless telecommunications networks. Using DF Raptor FEC, Digital Fountain has implemented the Digital Fountain File Delivery Engine and Streaming Engine technologies to support the development of advanced file download and streaming media applications. For more information, visit Digital Fountain's Web site at www.digitalfountain.com.

DF Raptor, Digital Fountain, and the Digital Fountain logo are trademarks of Digital Fountain, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.