Reliance Partners Into CDN Via Internap

In an interesting partnership ^[1], Internap will be opening a CDN POP in Mumbai, India, presumably with Reliance’s aid, and Reliance Globalcom will be reselling CDN services ‘powered by Internap’.

I’ve been a skeptic about carriers entering the CDN market directly ^[2], but partnerships like this make a great deal of sense.  Internap and Reliance Globalcom are not competitors.  Reliance did buy Yipes which used to sell IP Transit, but they have since de-emphasized the product almost completely in favor of ethernet and VPLS.  Internap doesn’t sell ethernet or VPLS.  So if an aggressive carrier like Reliance wants to enter the CDN space but doesn’t really have the assets to do it directly, a partnership with Internap’s CDN in which India gets hooked up is a case where nobody loses and everyone stands to gain.

Reliance Globalcom is becoming a bigger and bigger player in international telecom, bulking up both its assets and its product offerings.  Of course, their parent is also doing some rather incomprehensible things, such as the brotherly feud over the MTN buyout recently ^[3].  Ah well, there’s always room for a new storymaker in the telecom world, so I won’t complain.