TokBox Transforms WebRTC Into Commercial-Grade Vid

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 24, 2013) - TokBox, a Telefónica Digital company, today released the most advanced upgrade for WebRTC video communications with the introduction of new cloud infrastructure for the OpenTok on WebRTC Platform.

Mantis, a media distribution framework, provides a major upgrade to WebRTC client capability, including:

• High-quality multi-party video calls
• Cross-browser compatibility for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer
• Cross-device compatibility for iOS native apps and Chrome on Android
• SIP interop: ability to dial in to a WebRTC video session from any cell or landline phone
• Reduced upload bandwidth consumption with ability to scale out a single WebRTC stream to many endpoints

Proprietary to TokBox, Mantis intelligently routes, scales and shapes video streams traveling through the OpenTok on WebRTC Platform. These industry-first capabilities make OpenTok the first to provide a truly scalable commercial WebRTC platform for developers.

Off-the-shelf WebRTC limits the number of video call participants due to upload bandwidth restrictions. OpenTok solves this with Mantis acting as a central cloud-based switching station for all WebRTC streams, allowing the live face-to-face video conversation to scale up, without requiring additional upstream bandwidth.

OpenTok also enables interoperability with telephony endpoints. Leveraging Telefónica Digital's telecom infrastructure, OpenTok now incorporates a complete SIP interop between PSTN or VOIP endpoints and WebRTC-enabled group video calls. This enables users who are not video-enabled to dial-in to any multi-party video session.

Existing partners with applications or services already running on the OpenTok for WebRTC Platform will automatically benefit from the new capabilities without requiring any updates or code changes. Mantis was previously made available in closed beta to a number of OpenTok partners, including Roll20.

Roll20 co-creator Nolan T. Jones said: "Native WebRTC offers a range of advantages that we're excited to bring to our users, who frequently use over 100,000 minutes of video chat per day. OpenTok's additional infrastructure is the icing on the cake, giving us ways to better handle large group sizes and make WebRTC even more user friendly. Roll20's strength is based in being a cutting edge, browser-based program focused on making communication between users simple, and OpenTok's new platform is helping to make that possible."

Ian Small, TokBox CEO, commented: "We continue to invest heavily to deliver the building blocks around WebRTC that make it possible for developers and organizations to create and manage live video communication services and applications, delivering against real-world use cases."

"The WebRTC standard has so many virtues, but at the same time is still far from delivering the end-to-end capability that real-world apps need. For the benefit of anyone who believes in the value of live face-to-face communications, OpenTok evolves WebRTC into a legitimate commercial platform."

The introduction of Mantis follows the release of native support for Google Chrome, iOS and Firefox through OpenTok on WebRTC. It continues TokBox's commitment to remain the leading platform of choice for organizations and developers looking to develop and manage applications and service that incorporate live video communications.

TokBox will be demonstrating Mantis at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam, April 25-26.