Analysys Mason's new study shows that Internet content and application providers invest more than USD30 billion per year in physical networks, facilities and equipment. This investment is necessary to deliver the content that end users want. It benefits the Internet as a whole, end users and the other players that invest in the physical fabric of the Internet.

Content and application providers highlighted by the study include ‘pure’ online companies, such as Facebook, Google and Spotify, as well as the online businesses of multi-platform players, such as the BBC and the New York Times.

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THE REPORT FINDINGS

The report highlights that content and application providers are now major investors in Internet infrastructure, even though contents and applications are their core business. They are investing in physical network, facilities and equipment – from data centres to submarine cables and the multitude of servers that store, process and serve content to end users. This investment is becoming increasingly necessary to deliver content to a growing number of end users at the quality demanded.

Investment relates to three major activities.

• Hosting of content and data: This includes storage devices and servers, which reside in large data centres located throughout the world.
• Transport: This includes the high-capacity fibre optic cables (terrestrial or submarine) that are used to carry content from the hosting location to the edge of the Internet access provider network.
• Delivery: This includes the equipment necessary to hand over the content to the Internet access provider, which then delivers it across the 'middle' and 'last mile' to the end user. This includes in particular equipment used in Internet exchanges and content delivery networks.

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