feature content distribution
You don’t have to work in the media entertainment industry to understand that the habits of consumers related to video are changing rapidly. Tablets, smart-phones, PCs and connected appliances are all experiencing rapid growth as the vehicle of choice for accessing video entertainment. Clearly, ‘watching TV’ isn’t what it was. However, where and how the content originates is not as far a departure from the traditional as where and how it’s being watched. In order to ensure that consumers continue to be able to see what they want, where they want, both content providers and operators who enable connectivity (cable companies, satellite providers, telcos) are desperately wrestling to make sense of the changing landscape. Nivedita Nouvel, vice president of marketing at Broadpeak, reports.
A wholesale CDN opportunity T
he recent case in the United States involving cable giant, Comcast, and Netflix, a leading content distributor, laid out for all to see that the battle to control the
worldwide content-delivery super- highway is just beginning. In this dispute, Comcast began levying fees against Level 3, a content delivery network (CDN) partner of Netflix, to compensate for the enormous amount of bandwidth the service provider would require to deliver Netflix content to viewers. Level 3 balked, of
New services being offered by CDN solutions providers, such as Broadpeak, empower both operators and content providers by enabling the dissolution of the middle-man in the delivery chain.
course, claiming Comcast was charging a toll for use of the open Internet and called for government intervention - and the battle continues.
For consumers, though, the battle is irrelevant, just as long as they get the right content, quickly and efficiently, and at a fair price. But what of all the players who have a stake in that customer relationship? Content providers seem to be at the mercy of delivery partners who also now seem to have lost some control of the process - particularly the costs involved. And, with the growing amount of content being consumed by viewers over-the-top, or outside the boundaries of their traditional viewer/provider relationship, who’s controlling the quality of that content and ensuring there’s a satisfied viewer at the end of the pipe?
The wholesale solution
New services being offered by CDN solutions providers, such as Broadpeak, empower both operators and content providers by enabling the
20 l ibe l march/april 2011 l
www.ibeweb.com
dissolution of the middle-man in the delivery chain. Broadpeak, a spin-off of the widely diversified content production and distribution provider, Technicolor, specialises in creating content delivery networks that are highly customisable for multiplatform content delivery - and provide intuitive, user-friendly interfaces that take the mystery out of content distribution. Jacques Le Mancq, Broadpeak’s CEO, said: “Most content providers and operators are often at the mercy of a CDN because they offer an entrance-way onto the Internet for the provider’s content. A simple solution exists for these operators to own, manage and lease space on their networks without requiring intervention from a third-party CDN. An operator can become a wholesaler - leasing space on their networks, or offering resellers the opportunity to lease and manage that space.” The system required to wholesale this bandwidth to content providers through resellers is relatively simple, although the scale of such a system would certainly dictate final cost. The
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