NeuLion.com

NeuLion, a global leader in IPTV technologies, is one of the largest live event streaming and multi-media solution companies in the world. Broadcasting with 200+ professional and collegiate sports properties including the NHL and NFL as well as over 200 international TV channels from over 40 countries including Chinese Programmer KyLinTV and faith based broadcaster, Sky Angel, NeuLion provides viewers the opportunity to stay connected anywhere, at anytime with its multi-platform service.

CHALLENGE:

Find a service provider who can meet our unique networking requirements

As NeuLion offers an end to end technology solution for this wide array of content owners, they face the challenge of building and managing a network to support each partner’s individual requirements while maintaining overall scale and continuity. Since the company’s inception in 2003, Ron Nunn, Executive Vice President of Business Operations has been building that infrastructure to connect those disparate networks and platforms together to provide a seamless offering to NeuLion’s clients.

“NeuLion’s biggest challenge when dealing with individual service providers for transit and CDN services was the requirement of large revenue commitments to attain the pricing we needed. This dramatically limited our ability to work with more than one provider” says Ron Nunn. “We wanted to create a multiple vendor platform that offered the key technologies for IP and CDN to support our networks that offered optimal performance, redundancy and cost effectiveness.”

Ron Nunn, NeuLion

The network, at that time, consisted of one service provider with competitive pricing that came with a significant commitment and offered no back up or redundancy. NeuLion needed a service provider who would look at their network requirements as holistically as they did for their clients. NeuLion found that provider in BandCon while discussing IP Transit services that required a unique approach to their specific traffic needs. Familiar with CDN pricing, NeuLion was looking for a provider who would bill Transit usage on a Gbps transfer model versus the traditional Mgbs. This distinction would be a critical component for their proposal to the NFL for streaming the league’s live and on demand football games around the world.

NeuLion needed a pricing model that would allow for unexpected spikes, night and weekend traffic and most of all, give them the flexibility to fulfill traffic commitments during the season without penalty for the months not in use. Other IP providers were simply unwilling or unable to make such concessions because they either did not understand the difference in the very different billing measurements or if they did, their billing systems and financial controls would not support such an exception. Very familiar with CDN services, quickly determined that they could offer the kind of pricing and flexibility that NeuLion needed.

SOLUTION:
BandCon has changed how we manage our network

NeuLion’s high definition streaming video services require high-speed bandwidth, geographic distribution, multiple format delivery options and QoS performance.  The BandCon CDS™ allows NeuLion to mix and match locations, services, carriers and formats to truly assemble a best of breed network topography. BandCon offers NeuLion a different way to buy and manage internet infrastructure services including: Colocation, IP Transit, Transport and CDN in a way that meets their requirements. What started out as a conversation about IP Transit has grown into a true partnership between NeuLion and BandCon as the two companies appreciate the others business model and the value they bring to each other. Using BandCon for its infrastructure needs allows Ron and his team to focus on what they do best, weaving multiple platforms and devices together to offer their clients the latest in content delivery technologies. “BandCon worked with us to arrange a price that we could not get otherwise that took my entire contract commitment into consideration. BandCon offers me unit pricing across multiple IP Transit and CDN platforms with Tier 1, best of breed providers, at a price that I cannot get otherwise.”

Ron Nunn, NeuLion

RESULTS:
Redundancy without worry

How has using BandCon improved NeuLion’s ability to support its customers? Ron Nunn explains that “Today NeuLion can deliver our content over multiple Tier 1 providers with full redundancy in our data centers with complete fail over without incurring additional costs. We can choose from 4 different CDN’s right now to deliver our content, splitting the same time with full redundancy and fail over. It is very nice for us to have full redundancy without worrying about how it impacts our costs.”

“The flexibility is the most important factor for us. Other vendors present multiple services but at the end of the day, still require that I make a separate commitment for each type of traffic; this makes all the difference for us.” Another important element of the BandCon Content Delivery System is the company’s commitment to customer service and satisfaction. BandCon delivers a truly personalized approach with their customer that goes beyond the day to day service activities. “We have a very good relationship with BandCon at the management levels of both companies. BandCon’s real strength is in how responsive and service oriented they are to our needs. I am happy with the people I interact with on a regular basis and know they work hard to make us happy.” says Ron Nunn about his experience with BandCon.

Ron Nunn, NeuLion