Teltoo, a startup focused on bringing scale to OTT-delivered live video services, has moved to the U.S. and opened a headquarters in Boulder, Colo.

The company, which will continue to keep its technical team based in Madrid, Spain, said it has also raised a round of funding. The amount has not been disclosed, but the company confirmed that Liberty Global is among Teltoo’s financial backers.

The move to Boulder also follows Teltoo’s involvement in UpRamp’s “Fiterator” program. That initiative, run by the CableLabs-backed startup accelerator, enables its selections to get exposure with cable operators alongside guaranteed commercial deals. In exchange, UpRamp gets a small equity stake (typically in the form of warrants) in the startups selected for the program.

RELATED: Four Startups Picked for CableLabs-Backed UpRamp Program

Teltoo completed the Fiterator program late last year.

Being in Boulder will keep Teltoo close to CableLabs, which is based in nearby Louisville, a growing tech startup community that has found a home in the Denver area, as well as content delivery companies such as CenturyLink (which now owns what used to be Level3 Communications, based in Broomfield), and Fastly, which has a presence in the Mile High City.

“Overall, we saw this was a good place to be,” Teltoo co-founder and CEO (and a former HP employee) Pablo Hesse said.

Teltoo, he said, has started a search for a COO and another sales exec to be based in the Colorado office.

Teltoo is focused on a software-driven, distributed architecture that can scale and improve the performance of live video streaming while also helping service providers conserve bandwidth. Per an earlier discussion with the company, Teltoo’s approach involves a small piece of JavaScript that is installed on the partner’s streaming video player for web browsers, mobile devices and even TV-connected devices. Working in tandem with servers, the platform manages the connections while a live stream is being delivered.

RELATED: Startup Pitches Cable-Friendly P2P Play

Liberty Global and RTVE, Spain’s state broadcaster, are among those that have been working with Teltoo in the early going. 

Verizon Ventures is among a group that recently plowed $3.2 million into Streamroot, a startup that’s focused on a P2P-style “distributed” OTT video delivery platform that offers an alternative to more traditional server-based content delivery networks.

The Verizon VC was joined in the round by Partech Ventures, Techstars Venture Capital Fund, and R/GA.

Founded in 2013, France-based Streamroot has raised $6 million so far and counts Dailymotion, Canal+, Eurosport (part of the Discovery Communications group), and Russia Today as announced customers. The company estimates that it’s powering more than 400 million video session per month, and that 50% to 80% of its customers’ traffic is being delivered through its distributed architecture.

Streamroot sells a WebRTC-based P2P delivery system, holding that the efficiency of its approach can help online video achieve massive scale. Per its site, it offers flat-fee pricing that’s “akin to traditional satellite or television broadcasting.”

Others in the service provider sector are keeping a close eye on friendly forms of P2P.

Of recent note, UpRamp, the CableLabs-backed accelerator program, recently added Teltoo, a P2P tech startup, to a group that will be part of its “Fiterator” program.

RELATED: Four Startups Picked for CableLabs-Backed UpRamp Program

Teltoo, based in Madrid, Spain, is also looking to bring managed P2P into the streaming conversation with a scalable, ISP-friendly approach for delivering OTT at scale. Teltoo implements a small piece of JavaScript on its partner’s streaming video player for everything from laptops, to mobile devices and even set-top boxes. In tandem, those players are connected using WebRTC. Behind that is a server that represents the “brain” of the solution and manages the connections while a live stream is being delivered.

“This is a technology for cable operators and traditional broadcasters to help them to distribute streams over the internet,” and do so without buffering or other types of technical interruptions, company co-founder and CEO Pablo Hesse explained in this recent interview (subscription required).

Liberty Global and RTVE, Spain’s state broadcaster, are among Teltoo's known customers. 

Peer-to-peer technology tends to get a bad rap in cable-technology circles. Historically, it’s been known as a bandwidth hog and an approach that applies major stress to the upstream path of the high-speed data network.

Teltoo, a startup based in Madrid, Spain, is looking to alter that conversation with a cable- and ISP-friendly approach to P2P that is designed to allow partners to manage how bandwidth is allocated while also driving much more scale into over-the-top video, particularly for the highly-viewed “tentpole” TV events that have wreaked havoc on some OTT video players, including a new breed of virtual MVPDs.

Teltoo’s approach is not related to BitTorrent and other P2P technologies that are out there today, company co-founder and CEO Pablo Hesse stressed.

“This is a technology for cable operators and traditional broadcasters to help them to distribute streams over the internet,” and do so without buffering or other types of technical interruptions, he said.

While most of today’s streaming platforms try to answer the scaling issue by deploying more servers and infrastructure, Teltoo’s P2P system strives for higher levels of availability and stability by allowing users to share bandwidth.

Under its architecture, Teltoo implements a small piece of JavaScript on its partner’s streaming video player for everything from laptops, to mobile devices and even set-top boxes. In tandem, those players are connected using WebRTC, an open Internet standard that supports real-time communication and can run on HTML5, making it agnostic for the viewer and eliminating the need for separate plug-ins. Behind that is a server that represents the “brain” of the solution and manages the connections while a live stream is being delivered.

Teltoo is also designed to be agnostic in other ways, Hesse said, as it can support various encoders and digital rights management systems and products.

The result, the company claims, can help its partners offload of as much as 83% of bandwidth for those streams. In practice, that kind of number, of course, could be of keen interest to cable operators as well as programmers that are delivering more and more of their content over-the-top.

In fact, Teltoo’s approach is already getting some traction, as the startup is doing some work with Liberty Global as well as RTVE, Spain’s state broadcaster.

More recently, Teltoo, a company with founders who came from such companies as HP and NDS, was one of four startups selected by UpRamp’s “Fiterator” program. That initiative, run by the CableLabs-backed accelerator, enables its picks to get valuable exposure with cable operators alongside guaranteed commercial deals. In exchange, UpRamp gets a small equity stake (usually in the form of warrants) in the startups picked for the program.

Before it was recruited for the UpRamp program, Teltoo and its team went through the Virgin Media Accelerator held in London last year.

“We think there’s a real opportunity with TV everywhere and over-the-top [video] across our 60-odd members right now,” Scott Brown, UpRamp’s executive director, said.

Teltoo’s technology and product set “has gotten to the point that it’s applicable to the rest of the industry,” Brown added.

Brown also acknowledges that P2P typically has been a “third-rail conversation” with cable operators because of the asynchronous nature of their bandwidth (most deliver much more downstream capacity than upstream capacity).

“The reason why we think Teltoo has an advantage and opportunity to succeed in the cable space is the network management layer that they bring to this, where the MSO can actually control the level and quality and amount of up-bound bandwidth that’s used in this managed P2P.”