Blockcast, a Berkeley, CA based startup pioneering a radically cost-effective internet content delivery over television broadcast, today announced a joint satellite-based offering with picoNETS, a content delivery network (CDN) emphasizing high-performance deep-edge caching.
As more people turn to the internet for video and data consumption has skyrocketed with higher bitrate content, costs have soared for over-the-top (OTT) streaming service providers. Traditionally, content delivery costs over the internet costs grow linearly with the amount of data transferred. Each user streaming must pull their own copy of the media through a private channel over each network hop to the origin or CDN infrastructure. Unicast delivery, as it is called, in conjunction with the natural evolution of internet protocols towards security have resulted in significant duplicated traffic for popular media, leading to congestion, poor experiences and high costs.
Blockcast delivers content over broadcast networks utilizing one-to-many multicast to deliver to all interested recipients simultaneously with a single channel resource. With picoNETS, CDN servers deep in the network can simultaneously receive and cache the content for users to stream on-demand, relieving networks of duplicated requests, congestion and keeping content delivery costs relatively flat with visibly improved user QoE.
Blockcast’s revolutionary multicast adaptive HTTP proxy (MAHP), allows any internet media service to leverage multicast without any changes. It works with over-the-air broadcasts as a network overlay, simplifying deployments for telecom operators who struggle with the complexity of multicast network routing. With the Blockcast and picoNETs partnership, content providers can deliver content through satellite multicast to picoNETS’ nodes deep in the edge network and then end users fetch the content from a picoNETS’ node nearby via Local Fronthaul or Access Networks. This architecture also eliminates duplicate traffic for the same content to different edge nodes, thus additionally eliminating the cost of backhaul transit of duplicated traffic.
We conducted a study comparing the cost of multicast enhanced CDN vs traditional CDN services. Assuming an 50% forward error correction (FEC) overhead, delivering a year of content catalog assets and refreshes to cache-fill 1000 sites in a traditional CDN architecture would cost USD$510K while it would only cost USD$10.7K via a hybrid multicast CDN Architecture. The savings percentage increases with the number of receiver sites, and can reach up to 95%.
“The use of brute force to horizontally scale unicast delivery has reached its limits. The infrastructure doesn’t exist in emerging markets like Asia, Africa or Latin America where OTTs want to expand. Even in mature markets like the US, most service providers simply don’t have the capacity to deliver live events like the Super Bowl in 4K. Our turn-key multicast adaptive proxy solution takes advantage of the sharp drop in the price of over-the-air broadcast capacity to provide vertical scaling of telecom infra the streaming industry desperately needs.” Said Omar Ramadan, co-founder and CEO of Blockcast.
“With picoNETS deep edge Caching, we can deliver the highest quality videos to the remotest part of the world.” Said Prakash Advani, co-founder and CEO, picoNETS “Our technology is validated with Satellite Internet operators, 5G, 4G, fiber and wireless ISP networks. It also works on various MEC such as AWS Wavelength, Intel® Smart Edge Open, Magma Core and HPE MEC.”
While the current offering primarily serves content prewarming use cases. The partnership plans to extend the offering in the future to include LIVE streaming and unlock greater savings potential, including through direct-to-mobile (D2M). We also plan to expand the coverage of the offering to more locations. The partnership will work on joint customer opportunities, joint product roadmap and IP creation.
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About Blockcast:
Blockcast is a next-generation content delivery network leveraging broadcast-TV proven one-to-many delivery distribution for incredible cost savings and improved use of network bandwidth. Blockcast built a revolutionary Multicast Adaptive HTTP Proxy (MAHP) that can proxy any web origin over multicast without changes to client applications.
About picoNETS
picoNETS is a Deep Edge CDN (Content Delivery Network) startup. picoNETS works with leading content partners for an unmatched experience by providing zero buffering and ultra-low latency. picoNETS can deliver 4K Ultra HD, 8K, VR, and AR seamlessly. Applications can also run on the picoNETS platform’s distributed nodes, thereby improving the QoS (Quality of Service). picoNETS works with leading carriers and ISPs worldwide to deliver a superior experience for their users and reduce their backhaul and transit traffic. picoNETS engineers are continually innovating and developing solutions to enhance Internet Experiences.
Blockcast
Lisa Li
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sat-blockcast/
picoNETS
Ashish R. Bedekar
+1-203-819-8236 | +91 9867598520
https://www.linkedin.com/company/piconets
Media Contact
Company Name: Blockcast Inc.
Contact Person: Lisa Li
Email: Send Email
Phone: (510) 517-8020
Country: United States
Website: https://blockcast.net/