Level 3 Provides Bandwidth for Photobucket

Level 3 Communications has announced a multi-year agreement to provide high speed connectivity to Photobucket, the hugely popular free video and photo sharing service. Level 3 will provide Photobucket with access to its national backbone via multiple 10 gigabits per second (10GigE) ports.

While less known than competitors such as Flickr and Webshots, Photobucket is the market share leader in the online photo sharing sector, according to Hitwise. Photobucket says 7 million personal images and videos are uploaded to its system every day.

"With over 28 million global users and adding 80,000 new users per day, Photobucket needs a robust, reliable and highly scalable network provider," said Darren Crystal, chief technical officer and co-founder of Photobucket. "Photobucket has worked with Level 3 since our company's founding, and we are confident that they will continue to meet our needs."

"Photobucket's needs are unique based on their significant scale and rate of growth," said Brady Rafuse, president of Level 3 Content Markets. "We feel confident that our network will effectively support their continued success. This agreement demonstrates Level 3's commitment to address the business needs of today's digital media providers."

Level 3 said that 8 of the top-10 Internet destinations use it to deliver network solutions. The company offers Internet connectivity in 82 markets.