Level 3 Making It's Move: Acquires European Based Servecast To Accelerate Online Video Offering

Level 3 announced this afternoon that it had acquired Dublin based Servecast, a provider of live and on-demand video management and streaming services for broadband and mobile platforms. Level 3 paid approximately $45 million in cash for the company which did about $5 million in revenue for 2006. Servecast his a nice suite of content management tools for the enterprise and the media and entertainment verticals and has a good reputation in the European market.

No surprise here. As I wrote about a few months ago, Level 3 is looking to be a serious player in the content delivery market for audio and video. While some doubt whether or not a networking and carrier company can really thrive against the larger CDNs, I think they can and will. They have all the pieces to be able to provide a value service offering based on the entire ecosystem for content as opposed to just pushing bits.

When Level 3 launches with their streaming media based service in Q4 of this year, I expect they will become a serious competitor right out of the gate. There is no sign of the CDN market slowing down and with the arrival of new companies in the U.S. like CDNetworks and the P2P and next generation delivery networks gaining some traction, the fight for the content delivery market is really about to get serious.

Beet.tv has an interview with Level 3's Lisa Guillaume from the Streaming Media East show in May.

Note: I will be profiling CDNetworks, Internap and Move Networks in the coming weeks.