Digital Island, Excite@Home in Pact for Broadband Content Delivery

The following story corrects an earlier version which originally was published on Monday, May 29, 2001. The previous story has been deleted.

Content delivery network (CDN) Digital Island on Monday signed a distribution agreement to connect its “edge-of-the-net” servers to Excite@Home’s 15,000-mile backbone network.

The agreement enables Digital Island to market the audience of @Home users to its own business clients. For a price (of course), Digital Island now makes it easier for @Home viewers to view bandwidth-consuming streaming media and dynamic content from Digital Island customers, eliminating many of the chop and delay experienced with high-speed applications because those customers now have a direct path to the end-users.

Officials declined to elaborate on the terms of the deal.


Located at neutral co-location facilities, the servers are physically
closer to the customer, reducing much of the bottleneck for popular
applications like live online concerts or video downloads.

Hemant Vaidya, @Work senior vice president and general manager, said the
partnership gives his customers a much more enjoyable Internet experience.

“Digital Island and Excite@Home are working together to solve the Internet
bottleneck that slows down the performance of video and audio content that
broadband users want,” Vaidya said. “This alliance creates a truly
optimized broadband Internet experience.”

It’s clearly a relationship that suits both sides, something @Home
officials found out after opening up its network to third-party content
distributors last year.

Digital Island serves content from some of the biggest names in the
entertainment business, including Universal Music Group, Sega, CNBC and
FoxKids. All of these companies rely on the CDN’s ability to bring
seamless audio and video to the masses.

For @Home, the partnership brings in revenues from the deals it signs with
third-party CDNs, giving it a recurring revenue base. In addition to
Digital Island, companies like Akamai, Microcast and iBeam Broadcasting
have signed deals with the
sixth-largest
Internet service provider (ISP) to put their caching servers at the edge of
the network.

Tim Wilson, Digital Island chief marketing officer, said @Home’s unique
position as the largest high-speed ISP in the world, with 3.2 million cable
Internet users, makes it particularly well-suited to Digital Island’s service.

“Excite@Home users are ideal candidates for the high-value,
graphically-rich content that many Digital Island customers provide on
their Web sites,” Wilson said. “By linking our Footprint network with
Excite@Home, we can help guarantee a great Web experience that extends from
the home to the Web site and back again.”

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

News Around the Web