At the start of the pandemic, questions swirled around whether our internet could support an increasingly remote and digital world. The answer: it certainly tested internet providers. This was true for internet service providers (ISPs) across the spectrum from mature markets to smaller, developing areas that lack access to the same strong, low-cost infrastructure.
The pandemic has unfortunately shined a spotlight on broadband issues across the world, and the impact expands far beyond just limitations to scrolling social media or watching streaming video. Broadband inequities have surmounted globally, with students having trouble accessing remote school, employees struggling to connect to high-speed WiFi, and consumers suffering with unequal access to online news and entertainment. If last-mile providers cannot deliver equal, affordable internet experiences, it could worsen broadband inequities and slow down global development, including setbacks for businesses, jobs and schooling. Network providers - from the first to final mile - play a critical role in bridging these gaps to create a more inclusive world and allow for equal access to online content in our new normal.
To minimize these gaps and deliver top-notch online experiences to customers everywhere, many ISPs are finding value in partnering with edge networks and tech providers to strengthen their infrastructure. By forging these partnerships, ISPs can ensure optimal performance at scale and reduce costs, while simultaneously creating opportunities for new revenue-driving initiatives.
Delivering optimal internet experiences at-scale
The surge in demand for online video is putting a strain on internet providers and hindering performance. This means that people worldwide are facing struggles with connecting online - from dropping off Zoom calls for work to missing critical elearning sessions. This is especially true in smaller, emerging regions where internet infrastructure is already limited and the uptick in usage just expands capacity issues.
To improve performance and deliver seamless experiences at scale, many ISPs are looking for ways to cache content within their networks - meaning they only need to fetch the content once, rather than each time it’s requested by a viewer. By partnering with an edge tech provider, ISPs can create a solid infrastructure that enables them to better manage capacity and growth demands without sacrificing quality.
Reducing costs for ISPs and their subscribers
Costs associated with retrieving online content can vary around the world. For ISPs in regions where backhaul is expensive, the cost of retrieving content from remote servers is a significant line item. As demand grows, this content retrieval cost can spiral out of control.
Fortunately, on-net caching can have a major cost benefit in addition to performance benefits. Instead of paying over and over again to retrieve the same content, ISPs can retrieve a piece of content once and subsequently serve it out of on-net cache. The cost savings can be reinvested in other growth areas or can to increase profit margin.
Fueling new revenue-driving opportunities
In addition to performance and cost benefits, some on-net caching solutions even offer additional revenue streams. Many internet providers want to be more than a traffic pipe, and are looking for value-add services that they can monetize, capture revenue and move up the value chain. Partnering with an edge network allows ISPs to accomplish this: not only delivering better performance, saving money and fueling growth, but also potentially taking a cut of network providers’ traffic to provide a return on investment.
There are immediate and future benefits of on-net caching - expanding capacity, reducing costs, improving quality of experience and expanding revenue potential - while meeting new demands in remote learning, remote work, entertainment and beyond. 2020 taught internet providers the importance of delivering affordable content without risking customer experience, and these critical business priorities will surely continue in 2021 and beyond.
