Left Wins 2016 Wireless Broadband Alliance Industry Award for “Best Wireless Innovation and Excellence in Social Impact”
November 18, 2016 | By John Lyotier
SAN JOSE, USA & VANCOUVER, CANADA — NOVEMBER 17, 2016 — The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) today announces winners of its annual Industry Awards. The WBA Industry Awards 2016, taking place at the San Jose Wireless Global Congress, recognizes and celebrates excellence in wireless innovation. Left™, a Maple Ridge, BC-based company focused on mobile mesh technologies, won the 2016 award for having “Best Wireless Innovation and Excellence in Social Impact,” and for its work in bringing connectivity into Cuba.
“Our awards are a celebration of all that is great in our industry, encapsulating the passion, innovation, technical and business expertise that has shaped and helped to grow our ecosystem over the past 12 months”, said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance. “In the Best Wireless Innovation and Excellence in Social Impact category, Left won the award with the judges claiming it was an overall innovative solution and a ‘fresh’ way to look at the cost of access problem”, he added.
Left was recognized for the work it is doing with its WAVE platform and YO! mobile app. WAVE (Wireless Availability for Variable Environments) uses technology that is inside every smartphone to send and receive media between phones, without needing to use the Internet or a data connection. WAVE is a software platform that can run on any Android or iPhone device and will power apps created by Left and other developers worldwide.
The first implementation of Left’s technology is in its own consumer app called YO!. This app allows people to connect directly with other users who are nearby. Users can create their own curated collection of their favourite media content (e.g., videos, apps, documents) and these items can be discovered and accessed by other users on the private mesh network. It is fast, simple, direct, and there are no data costs. Users can also privately message friends who are on the same network — perfect for communicating at universities or crowded venues where networks can get congested.
Chris Jensen, Left’s CEO who was attending the WBA Industry Awards in San Jose, said: “The biggest problem that we have encountered is connectivity in high-density emerging markets, where the existing infrastructure cannot meet the demand. This includes China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Africa and large parts of Latin America. To address these connectivity problems, we are building the world’s largest mobile mesh, connecting individual smart phones (and IoT devices) peer-to-peer using software that allows any smart phone to virtually co-exist on multiple WiFi networks at once. Where existing wireless companies are spending more than $500B to deploy physical infrastructure to address the same problem, we have created a software stack that can enable interoperability and can run on any Android or iOS device. In other words, we turn the world’s smart phones into our mesh infrastructure. Moving vast amounts of data up and across physical infrastructure is unnecessary, requires a lot of power, and is unfeasible for many.”
“We believe that if we can rethink connectivity — we can raise people out of poverty, reduce infant mortality, spread education, and transition entire regions. There will be more than one billion smart phones sold into emerging markets next year, and we can add value to every single one”, Mr. Jensen added.
Learn more about WAVE and YO! at www.wave.io or watch a video that highlights Left’s vision to change the world here: http://bit.ly/moments-that-matter
ABOUT LEFT
Hello. We are Left, and we are doing things right. What that means is that we are trying to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, and in so doing, make a lasting impact on the world around us. Left is a tech innovations company headquartered in Maple Ridge, BC, and Khulna, Bangladesh. Left is building the world’s largest mobile mesh, connecting individual smart phones (and IoT devices) peer-to-peer using its patented software. In addition to being honored for its technology and product offerings, Left is recognized as the “Best Workplace in BC” and has been twice named as the BC Tech Association’s Tech Impact Award winner for Community Engagement. Learn more at www.Left.io
ABOUT THE WIRELESS BROADBAND ALLIANCE
Founded in 2003, the mission of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) is to champion the development of the converged wireless broadband ecosystem through seamless, secure and interoperable unlicensed wireless broadband services for delivering outstanding user experience. Building on our heritage of NGH and carrier Wi-Fi, WBA will continue to drive and support the adoption of Next Generation Wi-Fi services need coexistence and convergence of unlicensed and licensed networks across the entire public Wi-Fi ecosystem, including IoT, Big Data, Converged Services, Smart Cities, 5G, etc. Today, membership includes major fixed operators such as BT, Comcast and Time Warner Cable; seven of the top 10 mobile operator groups (by revenue) and leading technology companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Huawei Technologies, Google and Intel. WBA member operators collectively serve more than 2 billion subscribers and operate more than 30 million hotspots globally.
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