BitTorrent teams up with British cable company
BitTorrent and NTL, a british cable company, are working together to offer “legal” high speed video downloads to the public.
Over the last year more and more cable companies and tv-studio’s are looking for ways to distribute their content over the internet, NTL is the first cable company that is going to collaborate with BitTorrent.
Cachelogic, another company included in the trial will make sure the distribution will be optimal by using their P2P content cache devices on the NTL network. This agreement is a huge step forward for the online distribution of video, and for legitimizing BitTorrent.
The press release earlier today stated:
Central to the trial will be a unique proposition. It will combine the assets of BitTorrent’s file-swarming P2P client to maximise distribution with CacheLogic’s P2P content caches to further accelerate delivery and off-set the network costs normally associated with P2P, and utilizing ntl’s ultra-high speed access network. It will provide ground-breaking download speeds of broadcast quality content.
“Ntl is delighted to be working with its technology trial partners, BitTorrent and CacheLogic, in order to extend its high-quality video experience from the set top box to the media player,” said Kevin Baughan, director of network strategy at ntl. “The trial will be a unique combination of BitTorrent’s P2P client closely coupled with CacheLogic’s network based content caching and ntl’s deep fibre network in order to offer a transformational video downloading experience.”
“As the world’s leading P2P application, we are engaging artists and ISPs to build a consumer-friendly ecosystem around our protocol that allows all involved to benefit from P2P,” said Ashwin Navin, co-founder and president of BitTorrent. “We are pleased to announce our work with ntl and CacheLogic, as both entities share our vision for the future of content distribution.”
The technology trial is designed to utilize CacheLogic’s market leading P2P caching products to ensure the highest quality of service (QoS) by improving network efficiency, mitigating the cost of traffic and accelerating downloads.
“Through this partnership, we can jointly evaluate how P2P distribution can be a highly efficient mechanism to deliver truly compelling licensed content to broadband subscribers, whilst satisfying the economic requirements of the content owner and the network provider,” said Andrew Parker, CTO of CacheLogic.
The trial is expected to start in April 2006.
