Apple reportedly will pay ISPs for direct network connections

It's long been rumored that Apple is building its own content delivery network (CDN), and now it appears that the company is negotiating paid interconnection deals with "some of the largest ISPs in the US" in order to deliver Apple content to consumers.

Dan Rayburn, an analyst with extensive contacts in the CDN and Internet service provider industries, reported on Apple's latest moves.

"In February I blogged about a new group formed inside of Apple in 2013, tasked with building out their own CDN to deliver Apple software updates, apps and other Apple related content," Rayburn wrote. "Since my post, Apple has been very busy with their build-out deploying a lot of boxes running Apache Traffic Server and buying a ton of transit, co-location, wavelengths and other infrastructure services. Their CDN is quickly growing, and it won’t be long before we start seeing a portion of their content getting delivered from their new CDN."

According to Rayburn, "Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Pandora, EBay, and other content owners that have already built out their own CDNs" are also paying ISPs for interconnection.