Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
Speaker 1: which we talk with some of the brightest minds working
Speaker 1: in the media business. Today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety.
Speaker 1: With all the talk about all the new streaming services
Speaker 1: coming to market in the coming months, here's a question
Speaker 1: you don't hear much. Is the Internet capable of hosting
Speaker 1: this explosion of video and games? My guest today I
Speaker 1: had some thoughts on the matter. He's Tom Layton, CEO
Speaker 1: of acam I, one of the leading company's media businesses
Speaker 1: turned to to make sure their content makes it to
Speaker 1: consumers quickly and safely. Thanks for coming in, Tom, It's
Speaker 1: nice to be here. Thank you, and I'm glad to
Speaker 1: have you here because I think here in Hollywood we
Speaker 1: don't talk enough about streaming distribution, and I think the
Speaker 1: problem stems apart from a lack of education. So I
Speaker 1: want to start really simple. I want you to just explain,
Speaker 1: as they say on Reddit, as if I'm five, what
Speaker 1: exactly does acam I do for its media business clients.
Speaker 1: We actually deliver a lot of that streaming and the
Speaker 1: videos that you watch online. You know, people don't think
Speaker 1: about it. They turn on the TV or or the
Speaker 1: device and click on what they want to watch and
Speaker 1: it shows up. But how it's actually getting there is
Speaker 1: a lot different with online streaming than it would be
Speaker 1: with a cable or satellite, and it does beg the
Speaker 1: question and concern and whether the Internet can handle the
Speaker 1: growth of all the video traffic that's coming online and
Speaker 1: also the cost. You know, one of the big differences
Speaker 1: with the online version of streaming and the satellite version
Speaker 1: is that with satellite, all you had to do was
Speaker 1: send the TV show or the stream up to the
Speaker 1: satellite and then people could tune in, and every extra
Speaker 1: person that tuned in wouldn't cost anything more because you
Speaker 1: paid a lot to get the satellite. But after that
Speaker 1: it was free for people to turn on TVs and
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about how many or any
Speaker 1: congestion with the satellite. But the Internet is very different.
Speaker 1: For everybody who's turning on there's a computer somewhere and
Speaker 1: the Internet that is sending you your stream just for you.
Speaker 1: And so if you've got you know, ten million people watching,
Speaker 1: well there's ten million streams being created and being sent
Speaker 1: over the Internet, and that is a lot of traffic,
Speaker 1: and every stream costs money to send on the Internet.
Speaker 1: And that's where Akamy comes in. Uh. You know, we
Speaker 1: have a a much better way of getting all those
Speaker 1: videos and streams and broadcasts to the end user. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that it's more cost effective, it can scale, and
Speaker 1: that it comes in good quality. And the vision that
Speaker 1: I have as you speak, I almost picture of the
Speaker 1: cloud or the pipes of the Internet is a mountain,
Speaker 1: and you guys are like the sherpa taking the media
Speaker 1: client in there. I mean, is it that? I know?
Speaker 1: I'm curious even about the dynamic with you guys and
Speaker 1: media companies. Do they need an ACAM? I could they
Speaker 1: just build their own network out? I mean, how essential
Speaker 1: are you to this? Pretty essential? Very very few companies
Speaker 1: try to build their own because it's really hard to do.
Speaker 1: You know. The concept behind what we do is that
Speaker 1: say there's a hundred people watching a show in your neighborhood. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, without Akama, you'd be sending that signal that
Speaker 1: stream in a hundred times and it could start to
Speaker 1: fill up the pipes in your neighborhood, so that you
Speaker 1: couldn't get a good experience. With Akama, you know, we've
Speaker 1: placed our computer server already in your neighborhood, and we'll
Speaker 1: just send that signal in once and there's plenty of
Speaker 1: room to send it once, and from there we'll fan
Speaker 1: it out and get each person and reach you know,
Speaker 1: viewer in their homes or offices their copy locally. Uh,
Speaker 1: So that you're not trying to and ultimately at scale,
Speaker 1: trying to send millions and millions or you know, someday
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of copies of the signal from some
Speaker 1: core spot on the Internet. The Internet just couldn't handle
Speaker 1: it already. The Internet is congested and the peering points.
Speaker 1: But with Akamai, it does enable it to scale, and
Speaker 1: it makes it less expensive because you're not sending the
Speaker 1: signal from far away using up pipes that are really
Speaker 1: expensive across the country. You're sending it locally and the
Speaker 1: pipes they're much shorter and less expensive. So here we
Speaker 1: are in the early days of the so called streaming wars,
Speaker 1: where the video market that may have been dominated by
Speaker 1: saying Netflix, Amazon, and you know, the established media companies.
Speaker 1: Now we're seeing these Netflix rivals come in, uh, Comcast, Time, Warner,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, A T and T old Habits die hard, Apple,
Speaker 1: so many players coming in here. Does this even represent
Speaker 1: this kind of step change moment where the volume of
Speaker 1: video that you guys are going to have the sort
Speaker 1: of shepherd becomes much more difficult. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: volume levels are growing dramatically, and I think with the
Speaker 1: advent of these new O T T offers, which look
Speaker 1: pretty compelling in terms of the content, more and more
Speaker 1: watching will be done online and they'll be you'll watch
Speaker 1: it higher quality levels. Uh. And people don't think about it,
Speaker 1: but if you get the h D version, that takes
Speaker 1: a lot more traffic to produce that high quality image
Speaker 1: on your screen. Uh. And so that makes the traffic
Speaker 1: levels be even higher. And of course the more you
Speaker 1: watch online, the more traffic it creates. So I do
Speaker 1: think we're seeing a real spike up in traffic due
Speaker 1: to video O T T offers online. But is it
Speaker 1: about to get a lot worse? Is it about to
Speaker 1: get like, let's even say there's a scenario where all
Speaker 1: these streaming services take off like wildfire, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, everyone is guzzling these news services and maybe
Speaker 1: not quite at Netflix level, but getting there. Can acam
Speaker 1: I can the Internet handle all this? Yeah? Acam, I
Speaker 1: can handle it? On behalf of the Internet. I think
Speaker 1: the Internet on its own already couldn't do it. It's
Speaker 1: not architected to do it, and the cost would be
Speaker 1: much too great. But we do work with all the
Speaker 1: major OTT providers that are planning launches in a provision
Speaker 1: capacity to handle it. And I think you're right. If
Speaker 1: they're all popular, that's going to be a huge explosion
Speaker 1: in traffic and uh, you know, and we're prepared for that.
Speaker 1: That's what we do. Well, I'm assuming it's horrifically complicated,
Speaker 1: or is it not? Is it? Is it just as
Speaker 1: simple as look, we're's gonna have a lot of servers
Speaker 1: and call it a day. You know, you've got to
Speaker 1: have all the servers out there, for sure, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you're you're dead on arrival. Uh. And you've got to
Speaker 1: have them strategically located. You've got to be in all
Speaker 1: the neighborhoods, you know, And we locate our servers in
Speaker 1: four thousand places in a thousand cities. You can't just
Speaker 1: have one on the East coast or something that just
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't work. But it's more than just that. It
Speaker 1: is very complicated because well, you in this country, you've
Speaker 1: got hundreds of millions of people. Globally, You've got billions
Speaker 1: of people and a lot of people are watching different
Speaker 1: things at different times, and they've all got to get
Speaker 1: a good experience. And so managing that efficiently UH does
Speaker 1: take a lot of effort, and it has to have
Speaker 1: real time response, so it's all automated. You can't have
Speaker 1: somebody deciding, Okay, somebody just wanted to watch this movie,
Speaker 1: what server are they're going to get assigned to to
Speaker 1: get the stream. That's a very complicated process that you know,
Speaker 1: we've been perfecting now for over twenty years, and UH
Speaker 1: handle pretty much all the world's major events, you know,
Speaker 1: at scale today Already, we should make clear this is
Speaker 1: a global service. We're not just talking about the US.
Speaker 1: You're active, I think, and it's about a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty nine countries, yes, infrastructures in a hundred thirty nine countries,
Speaker 1: in a thousand cities, and you know, people here think
Speaker 1: about content in the States at you know, China is
Speaker 1: probably the world's largest internet market, India probably the largest.
Speaker 1: When it comes to watching sporting events, you know, we
Speaker 1: think about the Super Bowl being a big deal here,
Speaker 1: but you know, cricket they're far, far bigger. And you
Speaker 1: look at the crowds online. You know, this past summer
Speaker 1: for a cricket match we had twenty five million concurrent
Speaker 1: viewers on mobile devices. Talk about a challenge for delivering
Speaker 1: content and that just swamps out anything like the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl here in terms of being online. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you on the eve of the streaming
Speaker 1: war explosion. But as I think you've already alluded to,
Speaker 1: you're already seeing increases. I think you guys just noted
Speaker 1: earlier this month that for the first time Aclamy transmitted
Speaker 1: over and I hope I get this data point right,
Speaker 1: A hundred terror bytes per second. Yeah, hundred trillion bits,
Speaker 1: hundred terror bits per second. We got these numbers so
Speaker 1: large you can't even think about it. Well, but here's
Speaker 1: an interesting comparison. It's supposedly the same as download in
Speaker 1: thirty three hundred two hour HD movies every second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of puts in perspective. That does. Or you
Speaker 1: can think about a day every day now we're delivering
Speaker 1: traffic that would be the same as two hundred million
Speaker 1: DVDs or eight hundred billion web pages including all the pictures.
Speaker 1: The numbers are staggering, and as you know, I think
Speaker 1: the exciting part is this is the tip of the iceberg,
Speaker 1: as big as it is now. We're in the very
Speaker 1: early days of everything just moving online. And also we're
Speaker 1: largely talking about on demand content, but more and more,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you're seeing this with your clients both
Speaker 1: here and internationally. Live content, particularly sports. I assume there's
Speaker 1: an added demand there. And yet we're on the verge
Speaker 1: of probably an era not too far in the future
Speaker 1: where we could see some of the streaming companies take
Speaker 1: over the rights to major sports, be at NFL, nb A, whatnot.
Speaker 1: Uh Are we at a place where the demand or
Speaker 1: sorry not the demand, just the capacity for that is
Speaker 1: even possible, Yeah, you know, and doing it live is
Speaker 1: even harder. If it's v O D, you can get
Speaker 1: a copy of the show ahead of time and store
Speaker 1: it in the neighborhood and then it's ready when somebody
Speaker 1: wants to see it there. When it's live, you don't
Speaker 1: have it ahead of time, and increasingly you want to
Speaker 1: see it in real time, which means it just has
Speaker 1: to becoming streamed and you got to fan it out
Speaker 1: everywhere around the world. That's that's a lot harder to do,
Speaker 1: and also it drives a lot of traffic because people
Speaker 1: want to see it all at the same time, as
Speaker 1: opposed to spreading it out of course the across an evening.
Speaker 1: Say so, that puts a lot of pressure on the internet. Now,
Speaker 1: live traditionally has been done on TV through satellite, More
Speaker 1: and more it's it's online. And some of the world's
Speaker 1: major broadcasters now are envisioning the day when it's probably
Speaker 1: still ten years out, but they won't be using satellites anymore.
Speaker 1: It'll all be online. And that's a pretty interesting concept,
Speaker 1: you know. I think five years ago nobody thought that
Speaker 1: would ever happen. You go back ten years ago and
Speaker 1: nobody thought you'd ever watch a sporting event online. Why
Speaker 1: would you have TV? Well, we all do now, and
Speaker 1: we're to the point now where people are thinking it'll
Speaker 1: all be online at some point. I mean, we're having
Speaker 1: a very video centric conversation. But let's not forget there's
Speaker 1: more than just video on the internet. Healthcare, banking, all
Speaker 1: sorts of different kind of industries that create congestion of
Speaker 1: various kinds. So I guess I want to understand videos
Speaker 1: place in the overall sort of band with picture. Is
Speaker 1: it like, you know, the main band with hog or
Speaker 1: are we actually kind of missing the forest for the
Speaker 1: trees here and there's other things going on that videos
Speaker 1: is a little piker. Well, if you're talking about bandwidth
Speaker 1: our total traffic, there's two big hawks and they have
Speaker 1: almost all the traffic, and that would be video and software. Now,
Speaker 1: people don't think about software, but if you're playing Fortnite,
Speaker 1: you know, on a regular basis, you're downloading a gigantic
Speaker 1: chunk of software to play it. Or all those apps
Speaker 1: you have on your mobile device, they all have a
Speaker 1: pretty decent sized chunk of software and they're trying to
Speaker 1: update it all the time. And so I would say
Speaker 1: today the big consumers would be updating software on your
Speaker 1: devices and video. Now, in the long run, probably video
Speaker 1: takes over, but today they're they're equal in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, total traffic. You're banking transaction, buying something online?
Speaker 1: Tiny tiny tiny, Uh, Now there's a lot of back
Speaker 1: and forth. It's a very important transaction. Uh. Security is
Speaker 1: really important if you're buying something or you're doing banking online.
Speaker 1: But in terms of traffic volume tiny, And we'll get
Speaker 1: to security in a second. You know, you mentioned Fortnite,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, does one I think we can call
Speaker 1: it a phenomenon like that have a discernible impact on
Speaker 1: the networks that you're handling. You can, can you see
Speaker 1: one thing that becomes so popular that you have to
Speaker 1: sort of focus on the impact of just this one property.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we worry a lot about having the scale
Speaker 1: ready for a gaming, big gaming release. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: something like that can drive tens and tens of teara
Speaker 1: bits per second, you know, which is a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: it's thirty forty fifty trillion bits a second on the internet. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that's a that's a whopper, and that today those
Speaker 1: peak flash crowds for big gaming releases are bigger than
Speaker 1: the big sporting events or big video releases today, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe by about a factor of two. Now, overall traffic
Speaker 1: probably get more from video, and I think long run
Speaker 1: video takes over. But we worry a lot about a
Speaker 1: particular gaming release from the big guys. I'm actually surprised,
Speaker 1: given you know, the bulk that software represents, that in
Speaker 1: the longer term, that's not a bigger threat than video,
Speaker 1: particularly because you know we're here talking about the streaming wars,
Speaker 1: but we've got another war coming soon in terms of
Speaker 1: cloud gaming, lots of news services from big companies like
Speaker 1: Google Stadia. Is all that going to be okay? Because that,
Speaker 1: to me, what do I know, seems to be uh,
Speaker 1: maybe a bigger kettle of fish. That's a great question.
Speaker 1: You know, today with gaming, the traffic is just getting
Speaker 1: the software there, and you only do it once a month, say,
Speaker 1: or maybe there's updated releases on a weekly basis. But
Speaker 1: as you think about the future, if the video that
Speaker 1: produces the experience on your screen is coming from the
Speaker 1: cloud as opposed to being created on your device, which
Speaker 1: is how it's done you know today, that could create
Speaker 1: a lot of traffic. Now, the question is will that
Speaker 1: ever really be viable commercially? Uh? And people have been
Speaker 1: thinking about streaming the game to your device that you're
Speaker 1: actually playing it in what you see on your device
Speaker 1: comes from the cloud for over a decade. It's never
Speaker 1: really proved financially viable because now you've got to do
Speaker 1: the heavy duty compute in the cloud and you're streaming
Speaker 1: an experience just for that user. It's got to have
Speaker 1: really low latency, especially if it's a multiplayer game and
Speaker 1: has to be a rich experience, and that's that's expensive. Uh,
Speaker 1: So we'll see, you know how viable that is. Doesn't
Speaker 1: really take off, but the right commercial models there that
Speaker 1: hasn't been successful yet, so we'll see if if that
Speaker 1: will change. I just wonder listening to all this, the
Speaker 1: incredible demand that all these news services of various kinds
Speaker 1: you're gonna have on the cloud and so forth, is
Speaker 1: there like a worst case scenario that consumers need to
Speaker 1: keep in mind here? Could are you kept up nights
Speaker 1: by the notion that we could see something like a
Speaker 1: giant outage? Or at the end of the day, is
Speaker 1: the Internet maybe more nimble, more capable than we're giving
Speaker 1: it credit? Well, our job at ocam I is to
Speaker 1: make the Internet be okay here, to make it scale,
Speaker 1: to make it be fast, intelligent and secure, and that's
Speaker 1: what we do as a business. The Internet by itself
Speaker 1: is not nimble. Uh. It would already be in big
Speaker 1: trouble in terms of just the traffic that's there today,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't have any security. I'm bet it at all.
Speaker 1: You know. That's the kind of capabilities that ocamy adds
Speaker 1: in on behalf of our customers who are the major enterprises,
Speaker 1: the major banks, the major commerce companies, the major media
Speaker 1: and gaming companies. UH. And so it's up to companies
Speaker 1: to provide that capability to help make it work in
Speaker 1: the future. But why is it? It sounds like the
Speaker 1: Internet is almost like this, you know, infrastructure that is
Speaker 1: just slowly rotting, and it's good that acomy is there
Speaker 1: to to help sort of pave over the rough spots.
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious, why is that, I mean, is
Speaker 1: there Why aren't we seeing an Internet that, as it
Speaker 1: gets older, is better paved roads. The Internet is not rotting,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a fixed infrastructure. It's growing. Companies,
Speaker 1: the telcos have to put a lot of money to
Speaker 1: add more pipe and they the last mile is getting
Speaker 1: better and better. UH. And consumers at home offices pay
Speaker 1: to have a better last mile link. A lot of
Speaker 1: homes now in many cities have gig a bit per
Speaker 1: second coming into the home. UH. You look at five
Speaker 1: g and that will give a much better experience across
Speaker 1: the last mile. So improvements are being made to it,
Speaker 1: but the fundamental protocols don't really change very much, and
Speaker 1: that's a very slow process. Security is not inherently embedded.
Speaker 1: Was never designed into the Internet. Uh, it was not
Speaker 1: built to scale to you know, deliver you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of concurrent viewers video high quality video from
Speaker 1: a central location. That whole it wasn't it's it can't
Speaker 1: do that, and so you do need companies to come
Speaker 1: in and take what's there, which is very valuable. It's
Speaker 1: it's good, but to make it work for these applications
Speaker 1: we're thinking about now, and to make it be secure,
Speaker 1: because it's it's not set up to be secure. And
Speaker 1: digging a little deeper into security, what does that mean
Speaker 1: from a media perspective, This is a business that gets
Speaker 1: impacted in all sorts of ways by security issues, whether
Speaker 1: it's piracy that seems to be a scourge that just
Speaker 1: doesn't go away to you know, notorious incidents like the
Speaker 1: Sony hack where uh, you know, massive amounts of data
Speaker 1: privacies are compromised. Um. Does ACA might get involved in
Speaker 1: all ends of of security when it comes to the
Speaker 1: media businesses, Yeah, pretty much. Um. You know, and you
Speaker 1: have denial of service attacks, you know, a website or
Speaker 1: a news site is brought down, you have data corruption.
Speaker 1: This is where you go into a news site, for example,
Speaker 1: and you change the content. Some pretty famous examples of that.
Speaker 1: Very dangerous when you start changing what the news is
Speaker 1: on a site that people would would trust in. You
Speaker 1: have account takeover. Uh. That's really bad for banks, you know,
Speaker 1: when you have your bank account taken over and a
Speaker 1: criminal organization drains the funds. Uh. You know, that was
Speaker 1: not thought to be something that media companies had to
Speaker 1: worry about in the past, but now in the last
Speaker 1: year they've been targeted so that your O T T
Speaker 1: account gets stolen, your gaming account where you've built up
Speaker 1: all these tools or weapons or prizes or whatever. Those
Speaker 1: have monetary value with real dollars now and there's a
Speaker 1: black market for that, and you know, somebody hacks your account,
Speaker 1: steals all your stuff and then sells it online. We're seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, massive attacks on people's accounts to take them over.
Speaker 1: With media companies. Now, you mentioned the Sony hack as
Speaker 1: an enterprise. Media companies have a lot of sensitive information
Speaker 1: and there's third parties that go in there and steal
Speaker 1: that and then can publish it or do other things
Speaker 1: with it. Those are all things that acam I you know,
Speaker 1: is working to stop and building you know, services to
Speaker 1: keep from happening. Uh, it's a it's an interesting challenge
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. And it's interesting to hear you
Speaker 1: say that this has become a bigger problem in the
Speaker 1: past here, because frankly, at least in my circles, nobody's
Speaker 1: talking about it here in Hollywood. And I'm curious, is
Speaker 1: it because these media businesses don't understand these issues, don't
Speaker 1: appreciate the gravity of these threats, because it sounds pretty
Speaker 1: damn serious. Oh, I can assure you that big company
Speaker 1: media c s, O S, c I O s and
Speaker 1: increasingly CEOs are worried about it. Uh, And certainly when
Speaker 1: you get into data breaches things like happen with Sony there,
Speaker 1: every media CEO is worried about that our media, your
Speaker 1: company's targeted more or less than any other industry or
Speaker 1: is just every industry under attack these I think it
Speaker 1: depends on the nature of the attack. For banks, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're most worried about the accounts being taken over, you know,
Speaker 1: And what happens there is that human beings today have
Speaker 1: dozens of accounts online and they'll tend to use the
Speaker 1: same log in and the same password because who can
Speaker 1: remember dozens of different passwords and which account there on
Speaker 1: that's you know, really hard. And then one of the
Speaker 1: companies gets hacked, take Yahoo, and your credentials are stolen.
Speaker 1: And then what happens is the criminal organization takes your
Speaker 1: credential and gives it to a bot army and they
Speaker 1: will try out your credential on every bank in the world,
Speaker 1: every commerce site, now every media site, and they look
Speaker 1: to see did you have an account there and did
Speaker 1: you use the same password, And invariably they gets what
Speaker 1: it's called a hit, which means they found a a
Speaker 1: website where your credentials work. Then they sell that to
Speaker 1: organize crime. A different entity comes in and drains your
Speaker 1: bank account or buy if it's a commerce account by
Speaker 1: something online you know, and charges it to you. And
Speaker 1: if it's a media account you know, uses that now
Speaker 1: to uh steal your tools, you've amassed, anything of monetary
Speaker 1: value or other people will now be watching the video
Speaker 1: or buying videos under your account. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: a So it's a big problem that started with banks
Speaker 1: and has now moved everywhere. If you're a news site,
Speaker 1: your most vulnerable to a doss attack which brings you
Speaker 1: down or to data corruption, which means they change the headline,
Speaker 1: the terrorist organization puts their message as the news headline
Speaker 1: on your site, or they do something to embarrass somebody
Speaker 1: because they know lots of people are coming to the
Speaker 1: news site to see what the news is in the
Speaker 1: front page. Story will change. I'm wondering whether we're on
Speaker 1: the verge of seeing that kind of attack. But with
Speaker 1: deep fake video, which could be I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: even contemplate how awful damage like that could be done.
Speaker 1: Is that something that does ACAM I look at things
Speaker 1: like deep fakes and how you can stop that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. What we do is we stop the data
Speaker 1: corruption from happening, whatever it is. Uh. And so most
Speaker 1: of the major media news sites around the world use
Speaker 1: us for security. And if you you don't see these
Speaker 1: things happening so much anymore. And that's because we can
Speaker 1: block those attacks from corrupting the content on a website.
Speaker 1: So we're not looking to say is this video deep
Speaker 1: fake or was it the legitimate We're just making sure
Speaker 1: whatever video on that website came from the people who
Speaker 1: owned the website, not from some third party putting their
Speaker 1: own video on the website. Switching gears let's talk a
Speaker 1: bit about five G, which you know, tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: hype about how amazing it is going to be. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious the impact it has on your business or
Speaker 1: or maybe your impact on five G. Uh Is this
Speaker 1: going to be everything that it is being made out
Speaker 1: to be. Well, five G does a lot of good things.
Speaker 1: It gives you much better connectivity in the last mile
Speaker 1: or the end user connecting to the Internet or to
Speaker 1: the cell tower, much lower latency than traditional cellular, higher
Speaker 1: throughput uh, and more devices will be able to connect.
Speaker 1: And I think this will have the biggest impact on IoT,
Speaker 1: you know, the Internet of things now. IoT has been
Speaker 1: a pretty good buzzword, you know for the last five years,
Speaker 1: but you haven't seen much in the way of killer
Speaker 1: apps yet. I think that could change with five G.
Speaker 1: And we do see in our customer base now more
Speaker 1: and more interesting projects you know around five G. You know,
Speaker 1: sensors and your sneakers, sensors and your sporting equipment or
Speaker 1: closed sensors on price tags, sensor sureley in cars, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of them in cars today. Your gaming devices,
Speaker 1: you know, become things in the Internet of things. UH.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, the communication protocols. It's different. It's not Web,
Speaker 1: it's other protocols are being used that are a lot
Speaker 1: lighter weight. There's a lot more compute that will be
Speaker 1: done on the edge near the end user, and I
Speaker 1: think there'll be some pretty interesting applications. Already. Airlines are
Speaker 1: using it to sense when you're in the airport, pushed
Speaker 1: you notifications about your flight, get you updated with whatever METEA,
Speaker 1: or movies you might want to watch before you get
Speaker 1: on board, because once you're on board is a little harder.
Speaker 1: I think there'll be a lot of cool stuff with
Speaker 1: around IoT enabled by five G. In terms of the
Speaker 1: impact on akam I, it's it's great, you know for
Speaker 1: our business. Uh you know, because as you get more
Speaker 1: activity out at the last mile or the edge of
Speaker 1: the Internet, um, that's what we accommodate, you know, and
Speaker 1: it will put more stress on the core of the Internet.
Speaker 1: And our whole thesis is you want to serve the
Speaker 1: end user close to the end user, and as the
Speaker 1: last mile gets better, are that increases the need for
Speaker 1: the kind of things that we do, and we'll be
Speaker 1: helping the Internet to accommodate the load that will get
Speaker 1: put on it from five G. Listening to all this,
Speaker 1: I I think about I guess let's call it the
Speaker 1: last foot of the last mile, which is in my
Speaker 1: own home. You know. Look, I deal with issues like
Speaker 1: buffering maybe a little more often than i'd like. Um,
Speaker 1: and I assume all these things have more to do
Speaker 1: with my in home WiFi and whatever uh drawbacks that
Speaker 1: has At the end of the day, is there only
Speaker 1: so much you could do to deliver video as quick
Speaker 1: as possible when at the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: don't know what kind of control you have over, say,
Speaker 1: my faulty WiFi. Well, yeah, we don't have control of
Speaker 1: your faulty WiFi. But in a lot of the world
Speaker 1: today that's not the problem. Uh. It really is bottlenecks
Speaker 1: in the core of the Internet, and that's where it's
Speaker 1: breaking down, and that's what we get around. Uh. So
Speaker 1: what docummy, we can make that problem go away. Increasingly,
Speaker 1: we'll have software on your device and in your home
Speaker 1: that will make things better there. But I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think the home is the really the problem. You've
Speaker 1: been in my home, then well, okay, maybe in your
Speaker 1: home it's the problem. Interesting data point that acam I
Speaker 1: interacts with a hundred and thirty terror bytes of data
Speaker 1: on over one billion devices. That is a scale I
Speaker 1: can't even wrap my head around. Yeah, we're serving well, actually,
Speaker 1: billions of people every day. A lot of what billions
Speaker 1: of people do around the world every day runs through us,
Speaker 1: and our goal is to make it be really fast, efficient,
Speaker 1: and importantly to be secure. I feel like we've kind
Speaker 1: of been talking, perhaps interchangeably about what I think are
Speaker 1: sort of two different transmission modes wire line and wire lists.
Speaker 1: You know, I have different issues on my phone related
Speaker 1: than to my TV or my MacBook. Um, are there
Speaker 1: a different set of channel just from an Acomi perspective
Speaker 1: in terms of how you manage the Internet across those
Speaker 1: two different pipes, so to speak at a high level, No,
Speaker 1: at a high level, it's it's similar. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: cellular short of five G, but three G four G
Speaker 1: has higher latency. Uh. Then again, a lot of cable
Speaker 1: networks have high latency into your home with land lines. Um,
Speaker 1: So the and the capacities can be different. You know,
Speaker 1: three G and four G capacity through put is not
Speaker 1: so great if you're the only person at the tower, fine,
Speaker 1: but if you've got a lot of people using the tower,
Speaker 1: you can have capacity problems. You know, the connection into
Speaker 1: the homes now is actually pretty good in a lot
Speaker 1: of places, although you can get aggregation and congestion at
Speaker 1: the neighborhood or the community, you know, city level that
Speaker 1: will reduce your throughput. So the challenges at a high
Speaker 1: level of the saying the technology is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Our goal in both cases is to make it a
Speaker 1: good experience. There was a time not too long ago
Speaker 1: where there was a lot of conversation really is net
Speaker 1: neutrality started to become a bigger issue about things like
Speaker 1: peering agreements and you know, all sorts of negotiations between say,
Speaker 1: pay TV distributors and content delivery networks that seem to
Speaker 1: be all about holding the Internet together. I don't hear
Speaker 1: about that stuff as much anymore, and I'm curious, wise,
Speaker 1: is everything kind of settled and everyone's just sort of
Speaker 1: playing on the same page or or those conversations still
Speaker 1: as fractious as they've always been. We're just not hearing
Speaker 1: about it. I think the the the things that motivated
Speaker 1: that are the same things. On the one hand, you
Speaker 1: have the economic uh issues between some big content providers
Speaker 1: people who want to distribute movies, say, and big carriers
Speaker 1: who also have movies and uh and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: content channels that they want to distribute, and the question
Speaker 1: about who should pay to distribute that content, you know,
Speaker 1: should the carrier build out a lot of infrastructure and
Speaker 1: bear a lot of costs to distribute their competitors videos.
Speaker 1: You know, well, the some the competitor who has those
Speaker 1: videos think so and and did a very good job
Speaker 1: at getting the administration to agree, and that forced net
Speaker 1: neutrality laws. Then there is a new administration and so
Speaker 1: the control changed of who makes the decisions, and all
Speaker 1: those decisions got reversed, and so now it's not the
Speaker 1: case that the big carrier needs to pay. Now there's
Speaker 1: also a technical issue here that is really important that
Speaker 1: didn't that people didn't think about, and that is it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter so much who's paying. You just can't pay
Speaker 1: enough to distribute videos at scale from these core data
Speaker 1: centers from outside. There's just even if the carrier wanted to,
Speaker 1: which they did, and they couldn't afford to build all
Speaker 1: these gigantic pipes, you know, from the data centers into
Speaker 1: the neighborhoods, it's just not the right model. You need
Speaker 1: to be distributing locally. Uh. And the reason we had
Speaker 1: congestion and do and people were complaining they couldn't watch
Speaker 1: the movie without rebuffers, they couldn't watch a high quality
Speaker 1: wasn't so much the dispute between the media company and
Speaker 1: the carriers, because you need a different technical model. You
Speaker 1: need to be distributing that movie from from the edge
Speaker 1: or you know, inside way deep in the carrier. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that was what was really causing the equality problems. Uh.
Speaker 1: So all those issues are the same. It's just there's
Speaker 1: a different uh party in control today and they have
Speaker 1: a different view on how net neutrality should go. And
Speaker 1: on that front, one last question, I mean, do you
Speaker 1: guys have a dog in that hunt of net neutrality?
Speaker 1: Is there a company position about what you I think
Speaker 1: should be as it continues to be kind of a
Speaker 1: hot potato in d C. Yeah, so it sounds funny,
Speaker 1: but it's true. We're neutral on net neutrality. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we we help advise the government to educate them what's
Speaker 1: going on. We work with the big media companies because
Speaker 1: for a lot of them, we distribute their video, almost
Speaker 1: all of them, and obviously we work with the big carriers.
Speaker 1: They're big partners for us were embedded deep in their
Speaker 1: infrastructure and we help them be efficient and help their
Speaker 1: users get a good experience. So we work closely with
Speaker 1: with both sides, and uh so we don't have a
Speaker 1: you know, a stake really in net neutrality. Well, rest
Speaker 1: assured that will be a topic that I'm sure I
Speaker 1: will both continue to hear about for quite some time.
Speaker 1: But Tom, thanks for coming in. Really appreciate your education
Speaker 1: on an important subject. Thank you very much. This has
Speaker 1: been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week
Speaker 1: for another helping of scintillating conversation media movers and shakers,
Speaker 1: and please make sure you subscribe to the podcast to
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