REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—The National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) and Qwilt are reporting significant progress in their initiative to upgrade NCTC member networks across the United States with technologies that will provide high-quality content delivery and better digital experiences for up to 34 million households in the U.S.
In November 2021, NCTC and Qwilt launched a joint initiative to upgrade NCTC’s member networks across the United States so they can quickly increase their capacity to handle growing on-demand and live streaming traffic on ISP networks during primetime.
“We are constantly seeking new ways to bring impactful and innovative technology solutions to our clients, and our partnership with Qwilt does just that,” explained Jared Baumann, vice president of technology innovation at NCTC. “Qwilt’s edge cloud and open caching software provide the CDN infrastructure our members need to tackle the dramatic growth of streaming media on their networks head-on. It enables our members to deliver content with the greatest efficiency while also enabling, for the first time, monetization of OTT traffic that their networks are carrying.”
The partnership leverages Qwilt’s CDN technology within NCTC member networks to create a nationwide federated CDN.
The program, which the NCTA is billing as a first of its kind in the U.S., includes new hardware and CDN technology, installed at no extra cost to members in their networks. It also enables them to share in new services revenue generated by the federated platform. The outcome of the initiative ensures all members of the value chain – service providers, streaming platforms, and end-users – benefit from higher-quality streaming.
As of June 2022, 100+ NCTC members have signed up to deploy this upgrade in their networks.
The program is still open for qualifying members.
Every NCTC member deploying the solution is federated by Qwilt’s cloud service so content publishers can access the entire national CDN through a single API.
Qwilt’s technology is compliant with Open Caching guidelines from the Streaming Video Alliance which define an interoperable network of caches for content delivery. The solution is powered by Qwilt’s Edge Cloud for Content Delivery platformand runs on Cisco’s edge compute and networking infrastructure, so it can be delivered as-a-service to NCTC members.
Alon Maor, CEO, Qwilt, said: “This is one of the largest network upgrade initiatives of its kind, and we’re incredibly excited to see over 100 NCTC members join the initiative to date. We consistently outperform other CDNs in terms of quality and reliability, and NCTC members who joined the program benefit from higher-quality streaming, cost savings and monetization, thanks to the revenue share of content delivery fees Qwilt charges to content publishers. We are already shipping equipment to approved service providers and look forward to bringing more NCTC members onboard the nationwide content delivery network.”
Qwilt will be exhibiting at the NCTC’s upcoming The Independent Show, taking place July 24-27 at the Disney Yacht & Beach Club Resorts in Florida.
