Apple quietly builds out networks for content delivery
By Drew FitzGerald and Daisuke Wakabayashi
Apple Inc.
is stitching together a network of Internet infrastructure capable of
delivering large amounts of content to customers, giving the company
more control over the distribution of its online offerings while laying
the groundwork for more traffic if it decides to move deeper into
television.
Apple’s
AAPL
+0.19%
online delivery needs have grown in the last few years, driven by its
iCloud service for storing users’ data and rising sales of music, videos
and games from iTunes and the App Store. But the iPhone maker is
reported to have broader ambitions for television that could involve
expanding its Apple TV product or building its own television set.
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Advancing technologies could dramatically increase human life span, says Ray Kurzweil. He discusses these technologies with WSJ Editor in Chief Gerard Baker at WSJ’s CIO Network in San Diego, CA.
Snapping up Internet infrastructure supports all those pursuits at once.
Apple is signing long-term deals to lock up bandwidth and hiring more
networking experts, steps that companies like Google Inc.
GOOG
+0.12%
and Facebook Inc.
FB
+0.67%
have already taken to gain more control over the vast content they distribute.
Bill Norton, chief strategy officer for International Internet Exchange,
which helps companies line up Internet traffic agreements, estimates
that Apple has in a short time bought enough bandwidth from Web carriers
to move hundreds of gigabits of data each second.
“That’s the starting point for a very, very big network,” Norton said.
