What iBeam Gets

"What we look for in an access provider partner depends on the network," Pritchard said. "Broadband networks are of course very interesting to us. As a rough guideline, we look for partners with 30,000-plus subscribers. Going forward, we're looking at a lighter-weight box that could serve smaller populations, perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 users."

Don't despair if these numbers sound high to you. Pritchard stressed that each partner is evaluated individually. In fact, iBEAM's web site sets the participation requirement at just 10,000 narrowband or 1,000 broadband subscribers.

"Right now, most of the content we deliver is Internet radio—perhaps 50 to 60 percent," Pritchard said. "We put a premium on broadband—cable, DSL, and high-speed wireless—providers because this is where streaming video gets interesting." iBEAM is seeing an increase in interest from high-speed wireless providers like WinStar.

Footing the bill
"Our delivery model is very similar to TV, where ISPs essentially become local affiliates for content providers," Pritchard explained. "A new product, not yet offered, but in our roadmap, will allow last mile providers to earn revenue from syndicated premium content." For example, an ISP might offer a sports, finance, or news channel at higher bit rate, that is—700 Kbps instead of 100 Kbps, to subscribers who pay extra to receive high-quality video.

Ultimately, iBEAM sells its streaming audio and video delivery services to Internet content providers. The OnStage service delivers live events. The OnAir service delivers 24/7 content, like news or radio. The OnDemand service delivers audio and video clips. iBEAM broadcasts a combination of these three services to MaxCasters, based on content popularity.

"Rather than build just transport network, we've built a platform that allows providers to take advantage of content," Pritchard said. iBEAM supplies content providers with tools they can use to commercialize content: pay-per-view, ad insertion, targeted ad insertion, an Internet radio product, a syndication manager, and a digital rights manager.

Using space wisely
Most OnStage events are automatically broadcast, because live streams do not require storage. For all other streams, iBEAM must continually manage MaxCaster storage. "Today's news will be pushed to all servers today. Tomorrow, it will be still be available, but only from our data center," Pritchard explained. "We have 72 gigabytes of space on each edge server, and terabytes of storage at our data centers."

iBEAM's next release, slated for 2Q01, will enable intelligent pinning of content to a community, group of servers, or an individual MaxCaster. "We can manually pin content now," Pritchard said. "The new release will provide intelligent pinning by looking at multiple parameters, like hits, speed, and bandwidth. If you have one server at a business and another delivering content to home users, they'll be storing very different kinds of content."

Fitting the niche
On BroadView's roof in Horsham, you'll find two identical satellite receivers today—a Cidera dish for news, and an iBEAM dish for streaming media. ISPs like BroadView wonder—Do I really need both? It's all just broadcast traffic, isn't it?

iBEAM argues that streaming media networks (SMNs) and content delivery networks (CDNs) are based on two different network architectures. CDNs are optimized for speedy on-demand delivery of web objects, whereas SMNs are optimized for continuous streaming. While storage requirements clearly differ, one wonders why the same satellite feed cannot be used for both? In truth, the key difference may really be the customer base on the content side.

"At least a third of our company comes from the broadcast industry," Pritchard said. "We think we have the advantage in understanding content providers, especially when it comes to streaming. We have 425 streaming providers on-line now. Our competitors are doing similar things, but they are serving up more static web pages and objects, whereas we focus exclusively on streaming."

Final take
Our interpretation—iBEAM is content to allow Akamai and Digital Island sell CDN services to the big eCommerce web sites. Instead, iBEAM will focus on streaming content providers like MTV.com, MSNBC.com, SuperBowl.com, VH1.com, and VidNet. iBEAM customers include top record labels and new media companies, among others. iBEAM also caters to the enterprise market, delivering web seminars, web-based training, press conferences, virtual roadshows, and on-line presentations to customers like IBM/Lotus, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch.

Providers at the edge might find consolidated delivery more convenient, but iBEAM's free dish offer has already lured several large ISPs and CLECs into the access partner program, including AboveNet, AOL, Covad, Internet America, Rhythms, Spectrum Wireless, and WinStar. At this price, any North American ISP with a broadband subscriber base really has nothing to lose by giving iBEAM a look.

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