Qwilt, three6five partner to improve OTT video streaming in Africa

Qwilt, announced a technology partnership with three6five, 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 open cache solution as a leading 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.

“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.”