Verizon Communications agreed to acquire the assets of Intel Media, a business division dedicated to the development of Cloud TV products and services. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The deal includes intellectual property rights and other assets that enable Intel’s OnCue Cloud TV platform. Verizon will also make employment offers to substantially all of the approximately 350-person Intel unit, which will continue to be based in Santa Clara and be led by its current management team.
Verizon said the purchase will accelerate the availability of next-generation video services, both integrated with Verizon FiOS fiber-optic networks and delivered “over the top” to any device.
Lowell McAdam, chairman and CEO of Verizon, said: “The OnCue platform and team will help Verizon bring next-generation video services to audiences who increasingly expect to view content when, where and how they want it. Verizon already has extensive video content relationships, fixed and wireless delivery networks, and customer relationships in both the home and on mobile. This transaction provides us with the capabilities to build a powerful, capitally efficient engine for future growth and innovation. We will have the opportunity to enhance, expand, accelerate and integrate our delivery of video products and services to better serve audiences on a wide array of devices.”
Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel Corporation, said: “Intel Media’s over-the-top TV products are truly innovative and under Verizon’s ownership have the potential to change how people interact with content. The critical factor in gaining efficient access to content is based on your ability to scale quickly in subscribers and end users, which is why selling these assets to Verizon makes perfect sense, with its millions of FiOS network and wireless customers. This sale also enables Intel to further align our focus and resources around advancing our broad computing product portfolio in segments ranging from the Internet-of-Things to data centers.”
- In December, Verizon announced a definitive agreement to acquire EdgeCast, an industry leader in content delivery networks. Also in fourth-quarter 2013, Verizon announced the acquisition of upLynk’s exclusive technology that streamlines the process of uploading and encoding of video for live, linear and video-on-demand content.
- Edgecast operates a series of CDN “SuperPOPS” in over 30 locations around the world. Unlike earlier CDNs, which placed a small number of servers in thousands of locations, Edgecast focused on a smaller number of strategic global locations near primary Internet Exchange Points. These caching servers are located in data centers where major backbone providers operates Internet exchanges.
EdgeCast claims more than 6,000 accounts, including some of the world’s leading Web brands for global media delivery and acceleration services.
Verizon Digital Media Services plans to integrate EdgeCast capabilities in its own network.
