Strategic move will reduce streaming costs and network congestion for consumers of local content from iHeartRadio NZME and other broadcasters through a regional point-of-presence
StreamGuys, a pioneering content delivery network and streaming media provider, has launched a new service offering to benefit its growing roster of broadcasters and their listeners across the Oceania region of the Asia-Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand and other surrounding islands. The new service offering will further strengthen StreamGuys' overall Asia-Pacific strategy, which includes a Tokyo point of presence that services broadcasters in Japan, the Philippines and other northern Asia-Pacific countries.
Importantly, the Oceania service provides an overall better user experience for local residents, since the content is being consumed from a local point of presence (POP). Most Australia and New Zealand consumers are bound by metered accounts from ISPs, and international connectivity often becomes a bottleneck when consuming content delivered from overseas. This is a side effect of the higher expense of international bandwidth in comparison to local connectivity.
Up until recently, consumers streaming content from broadcasters in the Oceania region, including New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), were served by StreamGuys' data centers in Tokyo, Amsterdam or Chicago.
"Having the ability to serve content from within New Zealand greatly improves the end user experience, as consumers don’t have to use international transit to consume streaming content," said Eduardo Martinez, director of technology, StreamGuys. "This move ensures that local listeners are not penalized for consuming content over congested international links, while getting the same exceptional quality of service from StreamGuys at a much closer point of presence."
Wayne Sleeman, iHeartRadio NZ technical lead for NZME, adds that the new local POP ensures that his online audiences get a great user experience as a result of the streams being delivered from the regional StreamGuys point-of-presence. StreamGuys is the exclusive content delivery network for NZME's mobile streaming, and supports 74 online and mobile streams today.
"StreamGuys has supported our needs as a broadcaster moving beyond terrestrial-only deliver for the past several years, and continues to add new services and capacity to grow with us," said Sleeman. "The establishment of a local point-of-presence confirms their commitment to our business model by helping us keep costs low for our regional online and mobile listeners."
The new service offering, available today, offers plenty of capacity for other broadcasters in the region, and integrates the latest high-end, cloud-based streaming equipment. This includes virtualized servers to minimize hardware and maintenance; and software-defined transcoding equipment to accommodate multiple streaming formats. The flexible infrastructure offers high availability for quick deployments, and scalable streaming options based on changing broadcast dynamics.