CenturyLink has bought privately held OTT video distributor Streamroot for an undisclosed sum. CenturyLink said the Paris-based startup would help it improve video and static content delivery within bandwidth-constrained areas, and strengthen its content delivery network (CDN) and edge computing services.
Streamroot, which was founded in 2013, provides OTT video optimization technologies for content publishers, network service providers and enterprise customers. Streamroot's content delivery models enable connected consumer devices, including smartphones, tablets, computers and set-top boxes, load premium content securely through a private mesh delivery.
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Last month CenturyLink announced that it now has more than 100 initial edge compute locations across the U.S. to provide a range of managed services and hybrid cloud solutions to its customers. CenturyLink's edge compute services include 5 millisecond transport time from its existing locations to the edge, which is ideal for low latency applications such as video, virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence (AI). With its Level 3 deal in hand, CenturyLink also has a large backbone both in the U.S. and abroad.
By using an edge-based delivery architecture, CenturyLink said it will be able to achieve performance levels for video that current content delivery networks (CDNs) can't match. With its hybrid delivery approach for OTT, CenturyLink is banking on providing a better user experience to customers.
"Streamroot brings a data driven approach to improving the user experience, particularly during peak internet traffic hours. Streamroot's customers have chosen peer assisted and multi-CDN approaches to gain an advantage over their competition when serving popular, high quality content to large audiences globally," said CenturyLink's Bill Wohnoutka, vice president, global internet and content delivery services, in a statement. "This technology and the team that invented it are crucial to helping us enable high-quality viewing experiences, especially within hard to serve markets."
Wohnoutka said CenturyLink's CDN serves some of the largest global OTT providers.
"What we are offering our customers through this acquisition is a competitive advantage by bringing the power of big data and software to allow them to improve the user experience with rich media content during peak hours on the internet," he said in an email to FierceTelecom. "This is not about serving CenturyLink’s own OTT content, but rather about enabling our customers to get the most out of our CDN and other CDNs they may be utilizing, supporting a hybrid CDN approach. It is a true last mile solution that pushes edge computing all the way down to the user device to localize traffic and reduce the pressures that OTT content puts on carrier networks.
"This technology allows our OTT customers to completely control how, when and where peer- assisted CDN is used and offers them visibility to visualize the performance improvements it brings to specific devices within specific ISP networks in specific geographies, for example, at the city level. This visibility offers the information required to execute continual performance improvements as content/encoding rates increase and the number of OTT consumers continues to grow."
The deal for Streamroot closed on Friday. Streamroot's customer roster includes France Télévisions and Vivendi's Canal+ Group.