Red Bee Media expands global distribution platform with Equinix

With direct and secure connections via Equinix to Red Bee’s global platform for signal aggregation, UK content providers can now use the Channel Store to provide high-quality television bundles for their viewers.

Red Bee utilises an interconnection-first approach within Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX™) data centers in Amsterdam, Helsinki and London, to support its growing Channel Store—allowing content-owners and distributors to market and deliver multi-format, live content. The Channel Store enables millions of people across the globe to discover, enjoy and engage with, content prepared, managed, broadcast and streamed through Red Bee’s services.

Growing consumer demand for video on demand (VOD) on more internet connected devices, is driving innovation across the content and digital media sector. Viewers not only expect more choice, but a consistent quality of experience on whatever device they use from whatever location they’re in. These expectations have accelerated change across the sector—which was already digitising—to rapidly rearchitect infrastructure to keep pace with the increasingly challenging landscape.

Interconnection between multiple parties within the media workflow—such as content creators, distributors, Internet service providers, networks and cloud providers—is playing a critical role in this shift by enabling the real-time transmission of latency-sensitive data in a scalable and secure manner, away from the public internet.

Equinix has been a pioneer in building a global platform that enables media enterprises to interconnect with key parties in their supply chains via direct and secure interconnection. By doing this, companies can better scale operations, optimise latency and reach end-users in milliseconds .

Highlights/Key Facts

·       Red Bee Media is a leading global managed media services company headquartered in London, with 2,500 media experts in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and North America.

·       Red Bee’s Channel Store is a multi-format meet-me room for content-owners and distributors to market and deliver live content. It ensures high reliability, fast response times and strong signal quality. It currently features over 1,000 active channels and a catalogue of over 10.000 that can be spun up quickly whenever needed. It acquires signals from over 100 suppliers and distributes channels to over 30 affiliates.      

·       The Global Interconnection Index Volume 3, a market study by Equinix, shows interconnection—the direct and private data exchange between businesses—is enabling enterprises to gain a competitive advantage by integrating a wide variety of service providers, including networks, at the digital edge. This private connectivity is expected to outpace the public internet by almost 13x, as traditional forms of connectivity lack the necessary bandwidth to cope with new, data-intensive technologies.

·       Platform Equinix is home to more than 1,800 networks, 2,900 cloud and IT service providers, and 650+ content and digital media players, providing access to nearly 10,000 businesses around the world in rich vertical ecosystems. This allows Red Bee to partner with key network service providers and next generation platforms.

·       Findings from Equinix’s 2019-20 Global Tech Trends Survey—which gathered insights from over 2,450 global IT decision-makers—highlighted key priorities for IT strategies. Responses showed over half (54%) of IT decision-makers in EMEA are aiming to optimise the performance of networks, reducing latency, and 41% are planning to connect with new digital ecosystems.

·       Today, Red Bee is deployed in Equinix data centers in Amsterdam, Helsinki and London. The new UK point of presence adds to the company’s global distribution platform and Channel Store which already include points of presence in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.