CDN News: Level 3, Akamai, Octoshape, Cotendo

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the Content Delivery Network industry:

Fox Sports signs on with Level 3. Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that FOX Sports is using Level 3’s Vyvx VenueNet+ services to support the delivery of all Major League Baseball games that it broadcasts for the 2011 season. Combining voice, video and data services VenueNet+ will reduce operational complexities for FOX Sports and enable more advanced communications options for the event delivery process. "After using Level 3’s VenueNet+ services for the 2010 football season – including the Super Bowl, which was one of the most-watched events in history – we were truly impressed with the simplicity of the panel as well as the tremendous operational capabilities it enabled," said Jerry Steinberg, senior vice president of Field Operations with FOX Sports. "We’re pleased to work with Level 3 to provide viewers with top-quality broadcasts for the 2011 baseball season." Level 3 also announced that they have signed an agreement with Information Television Network (ITV), a producer of health and wellness broadcast programming based in Florida, to provide bandwidth support for the company’s expanding production needs.

AEG Digital Media Has Record Month with Akamai.  AEG Digital media, provider of complete webcast management and digital media services, announced today that it teamed with Akamai Technologies (AKAM) to deliver almost 170 million streams and more than 2,400 terabytes across the Akamai HD Network in April, the largest month ever for events enabled across the two companies' platforms. Fueling the 14.7 billion online viewing sessions during April 2011 alone were the Royal Wedding and Coachella Music and Arts Festival events. "More media companies are taking advantage of the fantastic opportunity to engage viewers and add value to programming through digital broadcasts of live events," said Suzanne Johnson, Director of Marketing at Akamai. "We have seen the numbers grow exponentially over the last year and expect that to continue as new devices and platforms emerge. The scale and power of the Akamai HD Network is behind many of these popular events to optimize the highest quality viewing experience on a global basis."

Octoshape selected by Tennis Channel.  Octoshape and B2 Broadcasting announced they have been chosen by Tennis Channel as the exclusive provier of video streaming services for the 110th French Open. B2 Broadcasting is providing the on-site encoding services, as well as the enhanced multi court video player experience. The encoded video signals are acquired using the Octoshape Infinite Uplink technologies and streaming to the audience is delivered through the Octoshape Infinite Edge technology suite. "The French Open is a fantastic event for B2 to leverage our Octoshape partnership and our core broadcasting competencies in providing a robust broadband player for Tennis Channel," said Paul Dingwitz, CTO B2 Broadcasting.

Cotendo selected by Conduit. CDN and service company Cotendo announced that Conduit, one of the world’s largest networks for application publishers, has adopted Cotendo’s suite of services as its primary tool for accelerating content delivery and enhancing content management to serve the needs of 260,000 publishers and 230 million users. Cotendo’s global network and traffic management services, such as CDN Load Balancing, Site Assure and Advanced DNS (ADNS), have enabled Conduit to offload on average 70-80% (and for some services up to 90%) of traffic from origin servers. “We are able to add new services and applications with confidence because Cotendo handles the traffic,” said Conduit’s Chief Technology Officer Dror Erez. “We can quickly introduce new programs without worrying about performance.”