The deal will see the companies deploy open caching across Europe and Africa
Vodafone has chosen Qwilt and Cisco’s federated content delivery platform to boost its streaming quality and capacity to its mobile and fixed broadband customers across Europe and Africa.
Vodafone will embed the solution at the edge of its networks. Open caching is attractive to operators because it converts already-deployed, less-flexible content delivery infrastructure into a higher-capacity, federated global CDN, featuring open APIs for content owners.
Cisco and Qwilt designed the CDN specifically for operators to use, unlike bigger CDNs like Akamai, and this makes the as-a-service solution attractive for edge CDN deployments.
Following a successful trial in Italy, Vodafone will initially start deploying the service in seven countries across Europe and Africa. Last October, Vodafone Turkey partnered Cisco and Qwilt to boost live streaming, video-on-demand and media apps for 25 million people across the country.
In March, The Soluciones division of Spanish telco Telefónica struck a deal with Qwilt under which the latter will expand its coverage and delivery capacity in Spain, using the Telefónica Content Distribution Network.
Vodafone Business products and services director Giorgio Migliarina said: “By using open caching, we can more easily scale the service to meet the growing demands for live streaming, video-on-demand, and application services whilst providing content providers with a standardised platform built on Open APIs across multiple countries in Europe and Africa.”
Vodafone Technology network strategy and engineering director Nadia Benabdallah added: “In recent years we have built one of the largest internet networks worldwide. We continue to evolve our strategy, setting ever higher industry standards for our customers and remaining one of the strongest players in the market.
“We are now excited to start a new phase of this strategy. One that will strengthen the quality of the service delivered to our customers, further decrease the cost of gigabits carried and open new opportunities for business growth,” she added.
“By harnessing the power of Open Caching, Vodafone is using its capabilities and position as a significant network operator to take an active role in effective content delivery, and to expand opportunities to monetise this value chain while enabling the next generation of content experiences across its markets,” said Qwilt CEO Alon Maor.
“This deployment significantly expands our global, all-edge delivery network, bringing us one step closer to our goal of reaching all consumers around the globe with the high-quality digital experiences they need and expect,” he added.
Joining the global federation
The rollout of services will progressively ramp up as Qwilt and Cisco work with additional service providers worldwide in what they claim is a move to create the world’s largest federated CDN. This will be supported by a global, consistent edge cloud footprint that benefits content publishers, service providers and customers.
More than 150 service providers have partnered with Qwilt to enable the open edge in their networks, including Verizon; BT, TIM Brazil, Telecom Argentina, Airtel, J:COM, Telefónica and Vodafone.
BT – which was an original flagship customer for the Qwilt CDN, based on the Streaming Video Alliance’s open caching technology – recently announced it was trialling a virtual CDN utilising software-born caches allow it to pop-up at selected points in its network to satisfy huge demands for ephemeral bandwidth, like game updates.
Vodafone sells London data centres
In separate news, Vodafone Enterprise has put up for sale six data centre and office freeholds in central London for £100m, according the Estates Gazette [subscription]. Savills is seeking buyers for the Network Portfolio, which totals 260,000 sq ft. The properties are let to Vodafone Enterprise UK on leases expiring in April 2032. The sites are being marketed with scope for medium to long-term redevelopment potential across uses including student and residential, as well as more offices and data centres.