Raise the Quality-of-Experience Bar for Your End Users – Even When Serving Content in Your Most Challenging Markets

At a time when streaming services are more challenged than ever to attract and retain subscribers, quality of experience (QoE) is everything. Yet not all users receive the same QoE, particularly those located in rural areas and underserved regions. In most instances, this is due to poor CDN connectivity or over-burdened ISP networks in that particular region. As the clamor for more content intensifies, and the growth of 4K and other dynamic viewing experiences complicated things further, these difficult-to-serve markets can quickly become a major pain point for streaming services looking to retain their brand reputation by delivering a consistently great experience to their users.

But what if these worst performing markets could be turned into top performers?

This pipe dream is now a possibility, thanks to Open Edge architecture. With help from Qwilt and our partner Cisco, service providers can seize the opportunity to transform content delivery in their markets. The outcome is a new content delivery infrastructure – deeply embedded in service provider networks – that can tackle burgeoning video traffic, including peak demand for live-streamed events, as well as the need for greater visibility, predictability, and control of that traffic.

Too good to be true?

Enter Open Caching

Open Caching technology brings the Open Edge to life, considerably enhancing streaming performance. It works by moving content efficiently across a service provider’s network and caching it closer in proximity to the end user. Caching content at the edge of the service provider network reduces buffering, improves video quality, and delivers an overall enhanced user experience. These advancements are possible because the edge location delivers lower latency, higher throughput, and reduced time to first frame.

Unlike traditional commercial CDN nodes that are located centrally in the mid-mile range, Open Caching nodes are deployed at the closest possible location to the users – often tens of miles or even just a few blocks away. This proximity allows applications and content to bypass peering points, traditionally the biggest roadblock to QoE.

For streaming consumers located in rural areas with poor connections or slow internet speeds, the impact of delivering content at the Open Edge is immeasurable. Its benefits are exemplified in instances of streaming major live sporting events or high-definition movies, where rurally-located users, or simply those with poor internet connections, are repeatedly plagued with the ‘wheel of doom.’

Transform Your Hard-to-Reach Markets into Your Star Performers

In 2022, Open Caching for content delivery drastically improved streaming QoE for 80% of US tier-one streaming platforms. The common link? They’re all leveraging Qwilt’s federated network of service providers, using in-network Open Caches on top of their current CDN. The result is that they’ve improved streaming KPIs for their lowest performing 20% of regions, making them their top-ranking performers.

Qwilt is committed to ensuring content is delivered in the quality it was imagined to ALL neighborhoods, large and small. And I’m particularly proud to see Qwilt’s efforts to help close the digital divide recognized with a Merit Award win. This recognition is testament to our work bringing high QoE to subscribers everywhere, and echoes a recent survey we conducted on CDN concerns during high-profile streaming events.

The survey found that content publishers are highly concerned about traditional CDN capacity and performance for streaming large-scale live events, especially during peak viewing times. 53% of content publisher respondents expressed concerns about their commercial CDN’s capacity and overall performance.

The survey also found that delivering massive live-streamed events requires multiple commercial CDNs for scale and geographic reach. To deliver a successful live-streamed event to an audience of 10 million, four or more commercial CDNs are usually required to deliver peak capacity at high quality. Getting as close to viewers as possible by tapping into service provider networks is critical to providing a top-quality viewing experience.

Qwilt Media Delivery

With over 150 service provider partners on board, we now proudly serve over one billion unique subscribers globally. This year, our federated CDN is expected to reach 200Tbps capacity. Our content delivery solution is commercially proven and delivers immediate value to all new content publishers who come on board our Open Edge network, based on open APIs.