China on course to rival United States for internet speed
Shenzhen-based content delivery company buys Korean rival with multinational operations
China is on course to rival the United States in internet speed after the mainland’s largest content delivery network (CDN) company announced it was buying a South Korean rival with operations in dozens of countries.
Wangsu Science & Technology Co said this week that its Hong Kong unit had signed an agreement to acquire 97.82 per cent of CDNetworks from Japan’s KDDI Corporation for US$185.72 million.
A CDN is a collection of global servers that host websites and optimise internet speeds by allowing users to get data from the closest server rather than at the origin.
The move will give Wangsu a global presence and narrow its gap with the world’s largest CDN company, Akamai Technologies of the US, which generated a revenue of US$2.3 billion last year.
The acquisition, Wangsu’s first since it listed in Shenzhen in 2012, will significantly boost the company’s ambition gain a greater international market share of the CDN business.