BitTorrent announces peer-to-peer video streaming app

You’ll soon be able to stream live video with your smartphone using a type of BitTorrent. Last year, BitTorrent Live was launched as a way to broadcast and stream live video for free. It’s only been on the desktop for now, but BitTorrent says that a mobile app is in the works for later this year — though it doesn’t say what platforms it might debut on or whether the app will allow for just broadcasting, just viewing, or both.

BitTorrent today announced plans to introduce the first Alpha product based on its Live P2P streaming technology: a new mobile streaming application coming later this year. Unfortunately, the company wouldn’t offer any more details beyond “The first app built using BitTorrent Live distributed technology will bring P2P broadcast to mobile devices.” Back in March 2013, BitTorrent released the Live P2P streaming protocol as a beta experiment with the motto: “Live streaming by the people, for the people.” It’s built to remove streaming barriers like bandwidth, cost, and infrastructure, and actually becomes more resilient as more people tune in. With smartphone shipments on the rise, a mobile solution makes sense as a first test for the protocol.