Level 3 CDN wins...

Several news out of Level 3 and their CDN business, recently, both out of Europe and the USA...

>>In the last few months, there has been increased discussion about the costs of delivering content from the Internet to the end user, and in particular, applications like iPlayer which are quite bandwidth intensive.

In a blog post by Anthony Rose, head of BBC Digital Media Technology, it has emerged that the BBC is in the process of switching its iPlayer hosting from current content distribution network (CDN) Akamai to Level 3 Communications prompting concern from a number of service providers about the increased cost burden this is likely to place on them.

a comment on Telecom Rumblings:

>>Level 3 at the BBC

The entrance of Tier-1 carriers into the CDN space therefore has the potential to shift some costs around and there will be pain. For Level 3 and AT&T, selling CDN services actually adds health to the overall IP transit markets by pulling traffic back off of the Akamai bypass, but those ISPs who have benefited won’t be happy because as buyers they like the IP transit market the way it is.

Tier 1 Research is also covering the news today:

>>The BBC iPlayer saga continues: Akamai dropped for Level 3 - UK carriers not happy

One of the most successful ongoing content delivery efforts of our times has been the BBC iPlayer, where BBC license holders (i.e., people in the UK who pay a 'television tax') get to watch BBC content up to seven days after its original broadcast – a very nice video timeshifting .....

another nice win for Level 3 (from The Industry Standard, click here for the link to the article):

>> Content-delivery network (CDN) vendor Level 3 Communications, on the other hand, has been given the task of delivering the DNC to everyone who wants to watch the convention live over the Internet.

To provide live streaming video of the DNC over the Web sites of major television networks and the Democratic National Convention Committee, Level 3 is deploying its transport equipment to aggregate fiber and connect it to the company's POP in Denver, then distribute video over its CDN to streaming locations. Level 3 also will cache all content from the DNC and make it available on-demand for anyone who wants to watch events they may have missed.