Cirion Enhances Media Delivery Across Latin America with Qwilt’s Open Caching Technology
Cirion, a leading digital infrastructure provider in Latin America, has deployed Qwilt’s innovative Open Caching technology to transform content delivery for media publishers and digital content consumers across the region. The collaboration addresses the increasing demand for high-quality streaming and content delivery, ensuring lower latency and improved streaming quality for over 600 million users in Latin America. Cirion’s edge cloud, supported by Qwilt’s Open Caching, delivers content closer to consumers, enhancing user experience and optimizing network resources.
THE CHALLENGE
Delivering High-Quality Streaming Across a Vast Region
The growth of internet usage in Latin America has been significant over the past decade. By 2023, more than 80% of the population in Latin America had access to the internet, with countries like Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay leading in penetration rates. The expansion of mobile internet has been particularly rapid, nearly doubling between 2014 and 2021. Despite this progress, challenges remain, such as the digital divide between urban and rural areas, and the need for improved internet quality and affordability across the region.
Cirion Content Delivery Network PoPs in Latin America
This growth has placed immense pressure on service providers like Cirion to rethink their media delivery architecture and business models. For Cirion, this has led to significant investment to develop a comprehensive digital network infrastructure that spans both terrestrial and subsea regions across and around the Americas. The terrestrial network includes approximately 22,000 km of metro coverage and an additional 32,500 km dedicated to long-haul connections. It also facilitates extensive connectivity with over 12,400 on-net buildings and 30 peering connections. The subsea network is equally extensive, covering over 36,000 km offering a total data transfer capacity of 150 Tb/s, connecting key locations across Latin America and with other continents globally.
Additionally, Cirion operates 18 carrier-neutral data centers strategically located across their network. These data centers collectively host more than 5,300 FP capacity. They are equipped with over 4,900 cross-connects and ensure direct connectivity to more than 95 carriers and cloud providers, linking 1,300 IP Autonomous Systems (AS’s) to the network, making Cirion a critical backbone for digital infrastructure and the largest, most interconnected digital network in the region.
However, traditional Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) that rely on centralized caches far from end-users often yield subpar performance as measured by increased latency and increase rebuffering rates, resulting in a poor user experience. With the number of SVOD subscribers in Latin America expected to increase by 118% from 2020 to 2026, according to Digital TV Research, Cirion faced the challenge of expanding and enhancing its infrastructure to deliver streaming content at scale to its ISP customers and their subscribers. The need for a distributed, low-latency solution became critical to meet the growing demands of the region’s digital consumers.
THE SOLUTION
Embracing a Distributed Edge Network
To address these challenges, Cirion partnered with Qwilt in January 2024 to deploy Qwilt’s Open Caching software and web services across every node in the Cirion network. This deployment included the integration of Qwilt edge nodes already embedded in major service provider networks in the region.
By June 2024, Cirion had successfully deployed 113 Qwilt edge nodes across 20 countries, including major cities like Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City. These Cirion edge nodes, enabled with Qwilt Open Caching, are enhanced by over 200 deeply embedded Qwilt nodes already deployed with service providers such as TIM Brazil and others throughout Latin America.
The deployment of Qwilt’s Open Caching technology with Cirion has resulted in the most distributed and highest-performing edge CDN in Latin America. The edge cloud, now offering over 100 Tbps of CDN delivery capacity, ensures that content is delivered closer to end-users, reducing latency and improving streaming quality.
THE LAUNCH
Revolutionizing Content Delivery for Latin America
The partnership between Cirion and Qwilt has revolutionized content delivery across Latin America. The edge cloud primarily serves streaming media delivery but is also capable of supporting other virtual network function (VNF)-based services and edge computing workloads. The integration of cloud-based open APIs federated with other Qwilt-enabled service provider edge clouds has resulted in a global unified content delivery platform.
This new architecture allows content publishers to efficiently deliver their content through Cirion’s network, benefiting both consumers and service providers across the region. The ability to deliver content from nodes within major cities has significantly reduced data transit across Cirion’s backhaul links, improving the overall customer experience.
THE IMPACT
Performance Improvements and Market Leadership
The results of the Cirion and Qwilt partnership have been remarkable. By deploying Qwilt’s Open Caching-based Media Delivery solution, Cirion has transformed a traditional centralized CDN into a highly distributed embedded edge network, offering immediate benefits for consumers today and long-term advantages as digital experiences continue to evolve.
“Qwilt’s vision of building the world’s largest, highest-performing edge delivery network continues to gather momentum. Each new partner, such as Cirion, that joins our federated CDN, adds more regional coverage to our globally distributed network. These partnerships showcase how the integration of local ISPs and open caching can deliver superior quality and better resilience for CDN services. Content publishers benefit from broader reach, while end-users experience improved streaming quality, fueling a virtuous cycle of growth in the open caching ecosystem.”
Cirion’s deployment with Qwilt has transformed it into one of the largest low-latency CDN service providers in Latin America, capable of reliably delivering high-quality live and on-demand media streaming throughout the region. This new infrastructure has positioned Cirion as a market leader, offering a scalable solution that meets the growing demand for high-quality digital content across Latin America.
THE OUTCOMES
Significant Benefits for Content Publishers and Consumers
The collaboration between Cirion and Qwilt has provided several key benefits for both content publishers and consumers in Latin America. By reducing the load on Cirion’s core network and delivering content closer to subscribers, the Open Caching technology has significantly improved key performance metrics such as latency, buffering, and video start failures.
This deployment not only enhances the user experience for millions of streaming media users but also creates new revenue opportunities for Cirion by positioning it within the content delivery value chain. As digital consumption continues to rise, Cirion’s edge cloud offers a future-proof solution capable of supporting the region’s growing demand for high-quality digital experiences.
“Our partnership with Qwilt has enabled us to transform content delivery across Latin America, providing a scalable, high-performance solution that meets the evolving needs of our customers and subscribers. By embracing open platforms and deploying edge-based technology, we have positioned ourselves as leaders in the region, delivering the high-quality digital experiences that today’s consumers expect.”
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