Mobile App Designed To Fast Track Video Streaming. Tuluntulu is a South African mobile content platform that aims to target audiences in Africa and around the world with content that is African orientated.
The company came about when the Adaptive Real-Time Internet Streaming Technology (ARTIST) project was created as a collaboration between the CSIR, East Coast Access and UCT. The project was funded by the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA).
The consortium approached Pierre van der Hoven, CEO and Founder of Tuluntulu, to commercialize the technology. These institutions or organizations came together to solve the problem of having slow internet service when viewing a video online, the company believes that a low bandwidth video broadcast platform will help solve this problem as the slow internet becomes worse when one is in a constrained bandwidth environment.
The platform is not only bound to sharing video content but it also includes on-screen feeds from listeners’ social media interactions or advertising and this is all seamlessly blended with the broadcast. ARTIST exploits various algorithms to conduct video coding and compression that is not bandwidth hungry and does not degrade the signal quality. It focuses on a very specific niche market that is one-to-many (users/viewers) live internet based broadcasting.
Tutuntulu can be said to be Africa’s leading source of African mobile content as the usage is free (no subscriptions), 100% free on Wi-Fi and with data costs only if the user is connected via a mobile network. The app so far has 34 streaming TV channels such as Al Jazeera, eNCA and SABC education. The app also has 28 streaming radio stations such as RiseFM, 94.7FM and ClifCentral.
According to its website, Tuluntulu has been downloaded over 475 000 times in over 150 countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The app has also managed to receive a number of awards such as the Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Leadership Award VOD on 2015, the Technology Top 100 Awards in 2015 and 2016 as well as the Best African App AppsAfrica Award in 2015.
