Qwilt and three6five Help Operators in Africa Ready Networks for Onslaught of Streaming Video Traffic

Qwilt and three6five Help Operators in Africa Ready Networks for Onslaught of Streaming Video Traffic

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., January 21, 2016 – Qwilt, a leading provider of of online video delivery and open video caching solutions, today announced a technology partnership with three6five, a leading IP networking service integrator in South Africa, to improve over-the-top (OTT) streaming video strategies for service providers in Africa. The partnership will enable three6five to offer service providers in the region with Qwilt’s award-winning open cache solution as a leading a strategy to address current challenges resulting from the growing demand for OTT.

The recent launch of new video streaming services throughout Africa is dramatically increasing traffic on operator networks as more subscribers start free trials and sign up for a monthly subscription, which often includes unlimited access to stream from the vast content libraries offered by these new content providers. This rapid growth of streaming video offerings can create massive bandwidth demands for service providers who must find new ways to cost effectively and rapidly scale their networks without sacrificing quality of experience (QoE).

“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 three6five CEO Tyrone Carroll. “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. No one knows streaming video and caching like Qwilt, and with over 100 open caching deployments worldwide, we’re excited to partner with the company to bring the benefits of network cost savings and improved Quality of Experience to network operators of all sizes in Africa.”

three6five works with network operators across the continent to build and upgrade networks to cope with constantly evolving market demands led by the current advancements in streaming video technology. In doing so, there are unique constraints in Africa that must be taken into consideration such as high transit, peering and network infrastructure costs. Additionally, with much of the OTT video content being served outside of the continent, maintaining the quality of subscriber experience and serving content at the highest available definition is a growing challenge. The company takes a rigorous and practical approach to IP services implementation and enabling reliable networks by fielding a range of best-in-breed products combined with technical expertise to deliver technology recommendations based on real-world experience.

“It won’t take long before streaming traffic in Africa accounts for 60 percent or more of a service provider’s downstream network traffic at peak—as we see now in Europe and the USA,” said Dave Matthews, vice president of EMEA for Qwilt. “With open caching, operators can offload 50 percent 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.”

Qwilt’s open cache solution is engineered specifically for high performance and scalable video delivery in the demanding environment of high capacity operator networks. Qwilt’s solution is delivered as a fully managed service to speed deployment and streamline ongoing operation. The broader operator organization—including network planning, engineering and operations teams—benefit from comprehensive media analytics, which offer insights into growth trends, content sources and consumer preferences. By relying on open caching for online video delivery at the network edge, operators can substantially reduce network capital and operational costs—a typical open cache deployment yields a return on investment (ROI) in less than 12 months.

“Qwilt is already working with a number of operators in South and East Africa where we serve over 50 percent of their video traffic locally. Based on these deployments, we have seen over 400 percent growth in streaming video in the last few weeks and are offloading online video content with greater than 70 percent cache efficiency in some cases. We’ve also seen QoE improvements in terms of average bit rate by 300 percent,” continued Matthews.

About three6five
Formed in 2009, three6five is a specialist IP networking service integrator and value added reseller that provides first-world services to enterprises and carriers across Africa. We pride ourselves on a rigorous approach to network implementation that satisfies our customers’ business needs. We field a range of best-in-breed products to complement our strong technical skills, creating practical solutions for empowering African communications.
For more information, visit www.three6five.com

About Qwilt
Qwilt addresses the impact of OTT video on operator networks with a unified, turnkey solution that combines open caching, video delivery and analytics technologies deployed at the subscriber edge. The Qwilt Video Fabric optimizes delivery of streaming video content to relieve network traffic congestion for operators and deliver a higher quality viewing experience for their customers. A growing number of the world’s leading cable, telecom and mobile service providers rely on Qwilt to optimize their networks to support growing consumer demand for online video content as a primary entertainment source. Qwilt is a founding member of the Streaming Video Alliance, a new industry forum building the open architecture for streaming. Founded in 2010 by industry veterans from Cisco and Juniper, Qwilt is backed by Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Ventures, Disrupt-ive, Innovation Endeavors, Marker and Redpoint Ventures. Learn more at www.qwilt.com.

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