GigaMonster may look like the new 1 Gbps kid in town with a recent splash to bring service to Denver residences this spring, but the service provider is set on differentiating itself by providing a direct onramp to enable customers to watch as much over the top video content as they want.
This is revolutionary thinking in light of the fact that traditional telco and cable broadband providers like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) may be offering larger pipes into the home, but want to want to control what content goes over these lanes.
Evidence of this has been seen with DirecTV OTT and Comcast's streaming products.
Bill Dodd, CEO of GigaMonster, told FierceTelecom that unlike traditional service providers that want to control high bandwidth video traffic outside of their walls, the service provider wants to do everything to support that content. Streaming video accounts for about 70 percent of all Internet traffic today.
"What you see is the guys that control a lot of upstream and metro circuits are really resistant to having a competing product coming over their data circuits," Dodd said. "You see that in the form of the net neutrality wars going on in Washington."
What's different about the GigaMonster's approach is that when a customer clicks on a Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) video, the stream bypasses the congestion of the traditional Internet.
Dodd says that GigaMonster is focused on enabling any OTT service a customer wants to work seamlessly on their network.
Set on delivering services to multifamily communities that reside in MDUs, GigaMonster's service features Direct Routing, which allows its customers to stream video from popular sites from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video (NASDAQ: AMZN) and others.
"We want our customers on our data product to feel like that they have the absolutely best gaming experience and the best streaming video experience," Dodd said. "Today, about 70 percent of our video traffic never goes over the Internet and we do direct routing into the heavy video bandwidth websites like Netflix and Sony."
In addition to providing users unfettered access to content, GigaMonster also does not impose data caps, contract terms or hidden fees that traditional providers have come known for.
"We're the new generation of Internet or as we like to say internally we're not your parent's Internet," Dodd said. "What we have said is let's get rid of everything that everyone hates about doing business with cable and ISPs."
Today, the service provider is present in 18 markets that target MDUs off of extensions from its growing dark fiber network. Seven of these markets are high density markets where it has deployed dark fiber.
Dodd said that with the dense dark fiber network "it could hit 400 communities in Denver without any effort and hit another 800 with building a few sub rings."
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