San Francisco-based startup Open Garden went live in May of 2012 and since its launch at TechCrunch Disrupt the company has gotten $2 million in seed funding along with gaining 2.1 million downloads. The start up states that, “Open Garden leverages crowdsourcing to create seamless connectivity across 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It enables users to create their own ad-hoc mesh networks with other Open Garden-enabled devices including smartphones, tablets and PCs. And it offers benefits for nearly every player in the mobile ecosystem: consumers, carriers. handset and tablet manufacturers.” The startup has a mobile and desktop app which will now be getting a 2.0 version at the LAUNCH Festival. Competitors in the sector are also making progress including Europe based Fon which has completed a major deal with Deutsche Telekom.
The two company’s are looking to create the world’s largest WiFi network through crowdsourcing but Fon seems to have the lead because it launched a lot earlier in 2006. However, at the rate that Open Garden was adopted by new users more competitors have room to grow int he sector.
Open Garden 2.0 has been redone to take advantage of multiple different devices, WiFi connections and any available internet signals. According to the company this means a hat means that “efficient, powerful and consistent” mobile Internet connections from a diverse sources including WiFi hotspots and 4G base stations.
According to Open Garden co-founder and CEO, Micha Benoliel, “Open Garden version 2.0 improves connections across all devices to provide enough bandwidth for data intensive downloads, like video, which accounts for approximately 50% of the traffic on mobile networks.” He adds that, “Version 1.0 of our apps have reached over 2.1 million installs. With version 2.0, we start to address the community aspect of our vision: this means that the more people are joining the Open Garden network, the better connectivity you can achieve.”
Open Garden had humble beginnings and according to Crunch Base, “Open Garden started with a test application on Android that turns your phone into a hotspot and gathered more than 1 million users. These users accounted for 0.03% of mobile broadband traffic in North America in 2011.” The company plans to make money by “premium features and advertising” that has the potential to tap into a $6 Billion dollar market.
Open Garden realizes that carriers need to be on board with the service in order for it to be successful. The company addresses the issue on their website by stating that,
“Open Garden’s technology provides an opportunity for carriers to address the shortcomings of cellular networks even as they deliver a superior experience for mobile data users. It enables faster, more efficient data transmissions without requiring users to manually sift through available networks to find the best one available. It minimizes network traffic without the use of data caps and network throttling, which consumers abhor.”
Source: The Next Web
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