CDNs, condemned to evolve in the face of the consolidation of Open Caching

The latest report of Rethink TV analyzes the 2024-2029 evolution of CDN and Media over QUIC (MoQ) technologies, highlighting the need to adopt new ways of commercializing the “billions of streams” of content transport.

The collective market of CDN will grow to almost 60 billion dollars in 2029, as the volume of distributed video traffic rises to 17,985 exabytes (EB) annually. Spurred by the adoption of HTTP/3 and QUIC, the emerging Media over QUIC (MoQ) transport standard will begin to emerge, while alternative CDN approaches will begin to erode the stalwart categories of Public and private CDNs.

The Rethink TV report also addresses questions such as what will happen when the trends of Open Caching y/o Telco CDN, and CDN providers reach agreements with ISP to place your infrastructure caching within ISP networks. From a network traffic point of view, the volume of traffic that moves between ISP networks (in the form of peering) will plummet. From a consumer perspective, there will be no difference. Everything seems to indicate that the arrival of HTTP/3 and its delivery mechanisms based on UDP (WHO, and later MOQ) will provide latency improvements, but many applications (such as betting and interactive video) will have to explore WebRTC, MoQ and approximations like LL-HLS, LL-DASH y HESP.

Likewise, as telecom CDNs and open caching come to the fore, he Volume of video traffic moving between networks should decrease. In the best case, each stream or video title would only have to enter an ISP's network once, be cached internally, position yourself optimal shape y delivered to all customers from the ISP. In that hypothetical scenario (and unrealistic, highlights Rethink TV), incoming traffic on the ISP network would decrease incredibly. Therefore, it will be necessary different business key performance indicators, rather than trying to essentially charge by volume of traffic delivered. CDN providers are already experimenting with different approaches, focused especially on the traffic spikes. At this point the MoQ technology will appear, which over time will trigger its extension until it reaches the lines of HTTP/3 and QUIC. However, that moment is currently expected to arrive beyond 2029.

Another key addressed by Rethink TV is the increased advertising in video on demand. Historically, a very heavy video-on-demand user would exceed the budgeted bandwidth. This could be offset by lower usage of the service by other subscribers, but the content provider was generally unable to increase prices to reflect usage levels. The advertising offers the opportunity to ensure that each flow is paid in full, as long as the Ad volume and CPM rates are managed correctly. for a service SVoD, it's a somewhat novel concept, but the point is that there are now fewer cost barriers to traffic growth than there were a couple of years ago.