James, great letter and response from IR.
If I may try to break it down for our non tech minded investors.
As IR says, all carriers can zero rate your data, but they can't do so at the individual app level, like Freeway does through the CSP. This is why Freeway can individualize apps and their associated data burn. Carriers in the past have only provided data from A to Z, but to make a practical analogy of how data is used in sponsorship, carriers now have to do it from A to Z, but at point B it may branch off on a new string such as B1, B2 etc. This is the individualizing the data per different apps.
The CSP managers all traffic that any mobile divice brings it through Freeway or Dataflex, and in doing so provides the necessary analytics of data usage. It controls the zero rating aspect and relays relevent info to the carrier using the devices IP. The CSP privides the necessary data for your sponsored app to function (although a device will need a certain minimum amount of data to initially function). Syntonics patented technology is unique in this field, and hence the reason why Tata and Verizon signed up immediately. Let's hope it stays this way.
And as IR says, other carriers will sign up once the sponsored data snowball gathers momentum. It will even snow in Africa, the Middle East, and SEA, but still too darn hot in Aussie. Besides, the roos would eat it all.
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