The Commonwealth of Independent States (“CIS”) is comprised of nine countries, with Russia being the largest. Based on 2014 estimates, the CIS Region has a total population of 227M and GDP of $2.33 trillion. As more of these countries make higher bandwidth available to broadband users, the market opportunity for CDN services is going to explode. What proof is there? Let’s take Armenia for example, which is one of the smaller countries in the CIS Region.

Ucom, a broadband provider in Armenia recently deployed GPON (Gigabit Optical Passive Network), and now more than 75,000 subscribers enjoy Gbps throughput speed in the last mile. At the same time, this network has become one of the most advanced FTTH (Fiber-to-the-home) regions in the world, even surpassing some parts within The States.

GPON equals 1Gbps/user at a minimum, and in the future the throughput capacity will be 10x to 20x. If we do the math, 75,000 subscribers x 1 Gbps = 75,000Gbps; that’s a lot of last mile throughput. What happens when other CIS regions start doing the same thing – the last mile bandwidth explosion is going to be a big Christmas gift nicely wrapped up for the CDNs operating in that local.

CIS Region Stats