Enhancing the Quality of Streaming Experiences for JPIX

As many of you will know, Qwilt has onboarded numerous new service providers to our global federated CDN over the past 12 months – both large and small. They include:

• Airtel, which boasts over 400 million subscribers in India
• Windstream, which has a fiber network stretching 170,000 miles across the United States
• Vodafone Turkey, which delivers content to 25 million subscribers in Turkey
• Over 100 NCTC members in the US, which collectively power high-quality content and digital experiences to over 34 million households

There is a great benefit for every partner that joins Qwilt’s ecosystem – and the more that join, the greater these benefits are for content publishers too, as they can reach larger numbers of viewers at any one time. This virtuous cycle works the other way as well. As more publishers come on board, the consumer’s viewing experience is markedly improved. That increases the demand for streaming… Hopefully, you can see the picture emerging!

The key element? Open caching technology. It’s a model built on cooperation between ISPs and CDN operators, whereby cache servers installed by ISPs are used as shared cache servers for CDNs. Unlike traditional infrastructure, ISPs are a full part of the OTT value chain and receive incremental value alongside it. In short, open caching removes the traditional bottlenecks of CDN networks, which my colleague, Gautier Demond, explains further in his recent video interview with Streaming Media.

JPIX Partners with Cisco and Qwilt to Advance Streaming Media Delivery in Japan

We have laid the key technical and commercial building blocks needed to scale the internet. But as internet usage grows year-on-year, the content delivery chain needs to respond to a future that will need to cope with unprecedented traffic, driven heavily by factors such as concurrent online gaming, live streaming, and other media applications.

And it’s why my colleagues Mark Fisher, Zeck Lim, and I are in Japan this week to attend the JPIX User Forum. We are delighted to formally announce that Cisco and Qwilt have partnered with JPIX, which joins our community of over 150 service providers globally. JPIX is one of Japan’s largest internet exchanges in terms of traffic volume and the number of customers connected (more than 250), which include ISPs, CATVs, NSPs, content providers, CDNs, cloud providers, and media providers.

At the heart of JPIX’s exchange network is our combined Edge Cloud for Delivery solution, based on Qwilt’s CDN platform (based on open caching), with Cisco’s edge infrastructure, which will be used to provide an exceptionally high quality of experience and delivery capacity for live streaming, video-on-demand, and media applications across Japan.

In doing so, JPIX has established a distributed layer of content caching resources that delivers media and applications closer to consumers. It means JPIX can rapidly scale with greater reliability while accommodating new digital services and experiences, including media and website delivery – and even future media such as volumetric streaming.

Content Publishers Utilizing Qwilt’s Edge Cloud for Content Delivery in Japan

As part of this exciting announcement, JPIX has already recruited and onboarded several content publishers to utilize the service. One of the first to use our Edge Cloud to deliver its content is J-Stream, one of Japan’s pre-eminent streaming companies with the largest market share in Japanese online video consumption. It also holds the proud honor of being the first company in Japan to offer streaming services back in 1997.

Another member of this partnership is J:COM, which aims to improve the viewing quality for its end users and improve the efficiency of its internet traffic distribution. By deeply embedding our Open Edge Cloud solution within its network, it has moved its content closer to its subscribers than other commercial or private CDNs. Content publishers are already delivering content on this platform, including a highly anticipated middleweight unification boxing fight that was live streamed in Japan earlier this year.

So far, we have received extremely positive feedback on the power of our open caching-based content delivery platform. This is only the start of our growth in Japan. Together with our partners, we are excited to continue expanding coverage and capacity while enabling more service providers, CDNs, and content publishers to enhance the quality of their streaming throughout the nation.

It’s fantastic to be able to announce these partnerships here in Japan. If you’re attending the JPIX User Forum this week, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.