Ericsson announced a partnership with the Bridge Alliance, a group of 34 mobile operators in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa serving a total of over 800 million customers, under which it will deploy its Unified Delivery Network (UDN) content delivery network solution across 12 countries in the Asia Pacific region.
The Bridge Alliance is the leading alliance of mobile operators in the Asia Pacific and MEA regions, and the agreement calls for Ericsson to deploy the UDN global content delivery network (CDN) platform, which provides content providers worldwide with connectivity to the last mile reach of network operators.
The partnership is designed to enhance collaboration between content providers and Bridge Alliance mobile carrier members and enable them to play a greater role in the content delivery value chain. Ericsson's advanced content distribution platform provides last mile network access to help enable the delivery of quality video and web content into caches located closer to end users and so improve the user experience.
Earlier this year, Bridge Alliance and SoftBank announced they had renewed their partnership to continue collaborating in the areas of enterprise mobility services, machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT). In October 2016, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) Group renewed its partnership with the Bridge Alliance for enterprise services covering Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.
In February of last year, Ericsson, the Global M2M Association (GMA), the Bridge Alliance and Samsung demonstrated multi-domestic capabilities designed to enable new business models for IoT. The solution targeted global enterprises seeking to securely deploy connected devices and services with adherence to local terms and conditions. The collaboration specifically involved Ericsson's Device Connection Platform (DCP) and the Samsung KNOX enterprise billing solution.
The Bridge Alliance has 34 members with an overall 800 million-plus customers that aims to facilitate roaming services and support multi-market enterprise and IoT solutions.
Bridge Alliance members include: Airtel (India, Sri Lanka and subsidiaries in Africa), AIS (Thailand), CSL Mobile (Hong Kong), CTM (Macau), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), MobiFone (Vietnam), Optus (Australia), Singtel (Singapore), SK Telecom (S Korea), STC (Saudi Arabia), SoftBank (Japan), Taiwan Mobile, Telkomcel (Timor-Leste and Indonesia), Turk Telekom and Viva (Bahrain and Kuwait). Alliance partners include China Unicom, Freemove and Global M2M Association
