Bengaluru, Aug 23 (IANS): Telecom major Reliance Communications (RCOM) Ltd and its arm Global Cloud Xchange (GCX) on Tuesday announced deploying cache-based content delivery network for internet and content service providers across the country at a cost lower than its peers.

"Our content delivery network 'Fast Edge' comprises of content caches (small packets of data) around our national network, connecting to nine data centres in major cities and 26 media conversion nodes in tier-2 and tier-3 cities for seamless and quick last mile connectivity to carry volumes of data, including videos," said RCOM & GCX Chief Executive Bill Barney at a preview of the launch here.

According to 2016 global internet trend report by KPCM (Key Privilege And Certificate Management) Mary Meeker, India's internet user base is growing at 40 per cent and surpassed the US to emerge as the second largest market after China.

"With the increasing number of OTT (over the top), gaming and new media firms targeting the Indiaas over 350 million user, the demand for quick response time, reduce risk of malicious attacks, visibility of control over traffic flows and network capacity bottle- necks are growing," Barney told reporters here.

Content caches are connected onward to the company's network of data centres located in key hubs along the emerging markets corridor. The open-source cache servers hosted on the company's routers deployed across the country transmit a variety of content, spanning social media, data, video and gaming.

"By building Fast Edge across our network, the distance for content to travel to the eyeball (end-user) can be slashed to 10 miles from 5,000 miles, eliminating the middle mile bottleneck," said RCOM's Senior Vice President Braham Singh.

As the flagship firm of Reliance group, the Anil Ambani-owned RCOM has a customer base of 118 million, including 2.6 million overseas retail customers.