Verizon Installs Novarra Transcoder - Mobilytics Has You Covered!

Well according to Dennis at Wap Review, and a Bango newsletter I got today, Verizon has installed the Novarra Transcoder on their network.

The largest US mobile carrier, Verizon Wireless has started funneling traffic between Verizon feature phones and the web through a transcoder from Novarra. Verizon calls the service “Optimized View” and has added promotional information and a FAQ to their customer website There is also a page on the carrier’s developer site which has links to a opt-out form and to a PDF document detailing the rules that the transcoder uses to determine which sites to transcode.

Essentially what this means for mobile analytics is that you are not getting the correct phone information. Rather than seeing “SonyEricsson K770” in your reports, you might see “Novarra-Vision/7.3”.

While this may be a problem for some mobile analytics vendors (see http://bangoserviceblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/verizon-transcodes-mobile-websites/), it is not an issue for us.

We built Mobilytics knowing that transcoders and other exceptions exist. As long as the vendor adheres to some basic guidelines (which almost all do), we are able to still report the correct information. We simply add some info to our exception engine, and all is well.

A similar issue exists for Blackberry Phones, the Google Transcoder, the Opera Mini browser, and other various sites and transcoders. This is why Mobile is different. Regular web analytics can’t account for these exceptions and provide incorrect information.

I want to thank Bango for pointing out this issue so we could update our exceptions engine. Nothing needs to be done by the Mobilytics customer for continued accurate reporting. While you will be seeing a lot of “Mozilla’s” and “Novarra’s” at Bango, expect to see less of them here in the coming days.

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