U.S. Cellular Selects Devicescape's Wi-Fi Offload Service

SAN BRUNO, CA--(Marketwire - Sep 13, 2012) - Devicescape, the Wi-Fi offload company, today announced that U.S. Cellular will deploy Devicescape's Offload Service for their Android-based smartphones. The Devicescape service transparently offloads cellular data traffic to Wi-Fi -- including Devicescape's own Curated Virtual Network (CVN) of over nine million Wi-Fi hotspots -- reducing cellular network congestion and improving the subscriber experience.

Smartphones continue their trend of rapid adoption by consumers due to the wide range of available services and applications. Popular video streaming and social networking applications are driving phenomenal volumes of data over the mobile network, leading to significant network congestion, particularly in urban or densely populated public spaces. Saturated networks can lead to dropped calls, poor application performance, and subscriber frustration. Complementing existing networks with Wi-Fi offload is fast becoming a principal strategy for mitigating this congestion challenge.

The Devicescape Offload Service is a policy- and quality-controlled management service that integrates commercial networks on-the-fly, encourages home and personal network use, and ensures a transparent user experience. Devicescape dramatically improves offload performance through patented automation technology that uses Devicescape's CVN of over nine million Wi-Fi hotspot locations. The cloud-based architecture allows a network operator to deploy an effective offload solution quickly and cost effectively versus traditional approaches.

"We are thrilled to add U.S. Cellular to our roster of customers," said Dave Fraser, CEO of Devicescape. "Demand for data services continues to grow dramatically and U.S. Cellular is clearly demonstrating their desire to continue to ensure they match their customers' expectations."

U.S. Cellular serves about 5.9 million subscribers in 26 U.S. states, and is headquartered in Chicago. A custom version of Devicescape's Offload Client, "Wi-Fi Now," will be pre-integrated into new U.S. Cellular devices, while existing devices will be able to access the Client via a free download. Wi-Fi Now is expected to be available on September 13th.

Devicescape provides Wi-Fi offload solutions for many mobile operators and device manufacturers around the globe. The economics of data over cellular is a growing issue within carrier organizations, particularly as consumption continues to skyrocket in the face of flattening revenue. Devicescape can help alleviate this issue when its Offload Service is integrated into an operator's overall service strategy, improving subscriber services, reducing expenses, and allowing for deferral of capital investment.

About Devicescape
Devicescape, The Wi-Fi Offload Company™, connects more devices to more Wi-Fi hotspots than any other offload service because Devicescape manages the largest virtual network of hotspots worldwide. Devicescape, which serves mobile operators with advanced Wi-Fi solutions, is headquartered in California, privately held by leading venture capital companies including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, August Capital, JAFCO Ventures, and Enterprise Partners. Online at www.devicescape.com.

About U.S. Cellular
U.S. Cellular rewards its customers with unmatched benefits and industry-leading innovations designed to elevate the customer experience. The Chicago-based carrier has a strong line-up of cutting-edge devices that are all backed by its high-speed nationwide network that has the highest call quality of any national carrier. Currently, 31 percent of customers have access to 4G LTE speeds and 58 percent will have access by the end of 2012. U.S. Cellular was named a J.D. Power and Associates Customer Service Champion in 2012 for the second year in a row. To learn more about U.S. Cellular, visit one of its retail stores or uscellular.com. To get the latest news, promos and videos, connect with U.S. Cellular on Facebook.com/uscellular, Twitter.com/uscellular and YouTube.com/uscellularcorp.