South African IP networking service integrator three6five has teamed up with online video delivery provider Qwilt to improve over-the-top (OTT) options for local service providers.
The partnership enables three6five to offer Qwilt’s open cache technology as growing demand for OTT in South Africa puts greater bandwidth pressure on operators trying to provide high quality video streaming solutions.
Earlier this month US streaming giant Netflix entered South Africa’s burgeoning subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) market, which has also witnessed entrances from the PCCW-owned ONTAPtv and MultiChoice’s Showmax since summer 2015.
South Africa’s newest entrant, Future TV, owned by IT company Triple S Solutions, is offering one platform which aims to provide up to 34 international streaming providers, including Netflix.
“The availability of new streaming services in Africa means that in order to remain competitive, network operators must redesign their network architecture to better support streaming video,” said Tyrone Carroll, CEO, three6five.
“A conventional approach to solving this problem means buying more routers, switches, links to upgrade networks and upgrading transit gateways and capacity. However, we believe and support Qwilt’s open caching approach to solving next-gen streaming video delivery challenges.
Dave Matthews, vice president of EMEA for Qwilt, added: “It won’t take long before streaming traffic in Africa accounts for 60% or more of a service provider’s downstream network traffic at peak — as we see now in Europe and the USA.
“With open caching, operators can offload 50% or more of streaming video traffic to a local cache on the network, reducing the cost of transit bandwidth and the cost of internal network capacity required to keep up with streaming demand. Our partnership with three6five will help operators prepare their networks to handle the rapid growth in streaming traffic from all types of content providers.”