BT Wholesale looks like getting into the Content Delivery business with a service known as Content Connect.

You might wonder what this means and be saying to yourself  “the BBC is a content provider, BT ain’t”. Well content delivery and content provision are not the same thing and the problem for ISPs is that the delivery of content is very inefficient over broadband networks.

If a hundred people watch the same TV programme online the way the world currently stands is that that programme will be streamed 100 times over an ISPs “backbone”. This is made worse because you, the consumer of internet bandwidth, want more and more content.  All the time.

Major sporting and political events such as the Friday post election coverage have millions of people watching online using their PCs.  They even watch on their PC whilst watching different coverage on the TV in front of them.

BT Content Connect is, I have to assume, a product that allows ISPs to satisfy their customers’ content watching needs in a far more efficient way than is the norm today.  I imagine that this means BT hosting content servers deep in the network so that it doesn’t have to touch an ISP’s pipe.

When I have more info on this I will report back. In the meantime click here for BT’s online spiel.