Verizon’s plan to purchase content delivery provider EdgeCast Networks, announced today, targets TV Everywhere and over-the-top applications, said Bob Touhy, President of Verizon Digital Media Services, in an interview.
Solutions to improve service quality will be in demand as “the industry continues to grow around IPTV, Internet media and the consumption of that,” said Touhy. By bringing EdgeCast into the Verizon fold, Verizon will be better positioned to “meet growth and demand” and “do interesting things around the consumption of video,” he added.
EdgeCast’s chief assets are global “SuperPOPs” located near major Internet peering points. “These SuperPOPs have massive amounts of computing and caching power and are directly connected to all the major backbone networks,” explains EdgeCast on its website. “The result is a blazing-fast content delivery network that’s purpose-built for the rich-media, large file, broadband web of today – and tomorrow. And that means your content is just milliseconds away from almost every broadband user in the world.”
In the U.S., EdgeCast has SuperPOPs in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington DC. In addition the company has SuperPOPs in South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. EdgeCast doesn’t operate its own Internet backbone but instead relies on peering connections with major ISPs.
EdgeCast is already a supplier to Verizon as well as a Verizon wholesale customer. In becoming part of Verizon, the EdgeCast business will benefit from Verizon’s relationships with telecom companies around the world, said EdgeCast President James Segil in today’s interview.
“Telecom operators love working with other telecom operators,” commented Segil.
The EdgeCast acquisition is the second acquisition Verizon Digital Media Services has made.this year. The previous acquisition was upLynk, provider of technology for uploading and encoding of video.
Verizon has considerable knowledge of content delivery through its FiOS video offering and is gaining more through its relationship with Red Box to provide video streaming. Verizon execs have noted previously that they see opportunities to leverage that knowledge to provide content delivery offerings to other service providers.
Touhy and Segil were not able to comment in detail about their plans but said more information will be forthcoming when the acquisition closes, which is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2014.
