Level 3 Communications  and Optus Wholesale and Satellite today announced that Level 3 is providing deep-edge caching services that will enable Optus to locally cache high-demand content on its network. The agreement gives Optus quicker access to content, while growing Level 3’s content delivery network (CDN) capacity in Australia by 300 per cent.

The demand for online video continues to grow globally. According to Adobe’s most recent Video Benchmark Report, online TV video consumption grew 388 per cent from 2013 to 2014. In addition, new research from Park Associates found that nearly 50 million streaming media players will be sold worldwide by 2017. This data, combined with the proliferation of smart devices like phones and tablets, creates a greater need for reliable, fast and high quality streaming video across the world, including in Australia.

Through its collaboration with Level 3, Optus can now offer its millions of customers faster deliveries and improved delivery completion rates as well as scale on demand to handle traffic spikes without affecting quality. In addition, Optus can resell Level 3’s CDN services across Australia.

“It’s critical for Optus Wholesale and Satellite to be able to facilitate content delivery from customers to end-users efficiently and in a way that elevates the end-user experience. Through Level 3’s CDN, we are able to improve the consumption of video, music, photo and data content over the Internet, not just locally within Australia, but also across the globe,” said Rob Parcell, Managing Director of Optus Wholesale and Satellite. “Broadcasting customers and website owners with rich media content will benefit from the deployment of this CDN network.”

“The explosion of over-the-top and other Internet video content can put a lot of strain on a network, creating issues in picture quality, speed and reliability,” said John Blount, regional president of North America and Asia for Level 3. “By putting our CDN servers on Optus’ network, we are enabling a better streaming video experience to Australian consumers, as well as creating a way for enterprises to leverage our CDN network for their content needs.”