KhushTech Korea Co., introduced the world’s first Direct-to-Mobile (D2M) feature phone for Free Stream Technologies (“FreeStream”), a D2M technology and platform provider incubated at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur.

The innovative and low-cost FreeStream branded phone is powered by Tejas Networks SL-3000 D2M demodulator chip embedded in the device and is intended for use in the 470-608 MHz broadcast bands.

In a recent high-level meeting with Shri Nara Lokesh, Hon’ble IT and Electronics Minister of Andhra Pradesh, KhushTech’s Founder and CEO, Eric Shin, showcased the groundbreaking FreeStream D2M feature phone and demonstrated its incredible potential to transform educational content delivery in rural areas and other challenging environments in a cost-effective and resilient manner by leveraging the scalable architecture of the next-generation ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard.

Direct-to-Mobile is a broadcast technology that uses terrestrial TV broadcast airwaves to deliver IP based live TV, Video, Audio, data and text messages (multimedia content) of public and national importance (such as entertainment, sports, educational programming and emergency alerts) directly to phones without the need for Wi-Fi or internet service. In addition to the SL-3000 chipset, Tejas Networks has also developed a suite of infrastructure hardware and software products for D2M deployment in collaboration with Sinclair Inc, USA. This technology has been under test in live networks by Prasar Bharati in partnership with IIT Kanpur and Tejas Networks over the past couple of years.

Sumeet Nindrajog, Director of Free Stream Technologies said, “We are pleased that KhushTech has rapidly developed a low-cost device that will appeal to hundreds of millions of users both in India and across the world. FreeStream looks forward to supporting and participating in D2M service deployment for Digital Bharat.”

Eric Shin, Founder and CEO of KhushTech Korea said, “We are very delighted to have successfully developed the world’s first D2M Feature Phone. Our low-cost device will be India’s first BIS Certified D2M Feature Phone and is ready for commercialization. We would like to thank our strategic partners Tejas Networks, FreeStream, and Sinclair for their full support in development over the past year and a half. We are keen to set up a world-class manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh to support Government of India’s “Make in India” initiative and will continue to invest in the development of various D2M embedded products.”

Parag Naik, Executive Vice President, Tejas Networks, said, “Our team has worked hard with KhushTech and made clever optimizations to the demodulator, the operating system and middleware to work within the resource constraints of a feature phone environment. Our end-to-end productization of D2M allows us to rapidly tweak, test and validate performance.”

Chris Ripley, President and CEO, Sinclair, Inc., said, “We applaud KhushTech’s commitment to manufacturing affordable devices that enable large scale adoption of “mobile first” ATSC 3.0. We are leading the work towards the next release of the standard – “Broadcast to Everything” (B2X) which will unleash next generation broadcast/multicast apps for numerous verticals of Digital Bharat.”

Source: BUSINESS WIRE