Telco giant Airtel partners with Israel’s Qwilt to offer content delivery services across India
Telco giant Airtel partners with Israel’s Qwilt to offer content delivery services across India
The deal is set to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for Qwilt over the next few years
Qwilt, an Israeli universal delivery platform, has announced that Bharti Airtel Limited (Airtel), India’s leading telecommunication services provider, has joined its ecosystem of service providers to improve the quality of live streaming, VoD, and media delivery to its 400 million subscribers across India. The partnership will see Airtel launch its own content delivery service called Airtel Cloud’s Edge CDN across the country based on Qwilt’s technology and will also become the largest service provider to deploy Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud solution. According to estimates, the deal is set to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for Qwilt over the next few years.
“Airtel is a tremendously exciting addition to our global ecosystem of service providers, and we are delighted to power a unique content delivery service offering in India,” said Alon Maor, CEO at Qwilt. “Our edge architecture provides a new economic model for streaming delivery, in which Airtel Cloud’s Edge CDN plays a central role in the end-to-end value chain. This announcement underscores the momentum we are gathering as we realize our ambition to build the world’s highest performing edge delivery network.”
Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud solution for service providers includes Qwilt software, cloud services, and open APIs. These provide quality-as-a-service content delivery and its solution will be deeply embedded within Airtel’s network. This means it will be closer to Airtel’s subscribers than any other commercial or private CDN.
Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO of Airtel Business, added: “Airtel is India’s leading provider of telecommunications services. As we get ready to launch 5G services we anticipate a significant increase in data consumption across major cities. Airtel Cloud’s Edge CDN, based on Qwilt’s technology, will substantially increase our ability to reliably deliver high-quality live and VoD streaming throughout India. We already have relationships with 16+ content providers across Indian states and we look forward to working with others looking to serve in this region so they can also enjoy the benefits of Airtel’s unique service offering across India.”
It is understood that Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud enables Airtel to establish a distributed layer of content caching resources that can deliver streaming media and apps to the closest possible location to subscribers.
Qwilt was founded in 2010 and is backed by Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Ventures, Disrupt-ive, Innovation Endeavors, Marker, and Redpoint Ventures. To date, it has raised $70 million and offers software and cloud solutions to help internet service providers address the growth of streaming media on their networks. Its cloud-managed open platform creates a distributed Edge Cloud that supports applications such as 4K Live Streaming, AR, VR, and IoT.
Airtel is headquartered in India and has more than 490 million subscribers in 17 countries across South Asia and Africa. It is India’s largest integrated communications solutions provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa.
