Onavo Compresses Data to Cut Mobile Bills

The company's app, which launched in April on Apple iOS and is expected before long for Android, promises to help subscribers squeeze more information and entertainment out of a given number of downloaded bits. It may grow increasingly relevant in the U.S., where mobile operators are now phasing out unlimited data plans, however there are two major limitations on the tool right now: It can't compress video or Internet voice calls but.

Onavo operates a cloud-based service that intercepts data headed for a user's smartphone and compresses it using specialized algorithms, said co-founder and CEO Guy Rosen. The service can reduce the amount of data a user consumes by as much as 80 percent, depending on the application and other factors, the company claims. Onavo has applied for patents on the compression algorithms it uses, Rosen said.

However, where Opera has focused on improving browser performance, Onavo is taking direct aim at phone bills, especially for international roaming.

The Onavo app

The Onavo app and service currently are free as an introductory offer, nevertheless the company plans later to start charging a per-month fee for its compression service. Rosen expects that cost to be less than $10 per month, yet the price will probably vary according to the customer's situation, just as whether they use international roaming. The monthly fee has to remain lower than the likely phone-bill savings to make sense, he said.

Other features built in to Onavo, just as a dashboard that shows the user what apps on the phone are consuming the most data, are likely to remain free, Rosen said.

Onavo may be good news to U.S. smartphone users, who have seen unlimited data plans by degree replaced by per-megabit offerings over the past few years. Before this month, Verizon discontinued its unlimited plans in favor of metered offerings that start at $30 per month for 2GB of data. It followed AT&T, which now offers plans to new subscribers starting at $15 per month for 200MB of data. Both carriers let users buy more megabytes if needed, and they allow existing subscribers on unlimited plans to keep those deals.