Today saw the announcement of a partnership agreement between BitTorrent and San Jose based ISP GNi. GNi will provide BitTorrent with a single connection that peers into six networks to ensure consistent access to fast connections.

"Essentially we partnered with GNi because as BitTorrent becomes a key player in the online video distribution space, it is imperative that we have reliable IP support," said Lily Lin, director of communications for BitTorrent. "With a secure,
scalable and fast network solution in place, BitTorrent can focus on delivering the best user experience."

When the Bittorrent distribution deal was announced a little over a month ago, I was sceptical about the benefits for wither company involved. But details in this PC Magazine story shed a whole different light on what may be going on here.

"It's a higher performance content delivery system," Wise said. "A lot of times when someone is downloading, it's smaller or the real time is not important because it's about the end result. Because this is a real-time streaming issue, it requires higher IP support. BitTorrent were more interested in finding a high-performance solution for bandwidth and that's what we do."

So, it's now a "real time streaming issue" which sounds much different than the internet movie delivery system were were talking about when the deal was announced. Since when is Bittorrent about real time, and just what are they cooking up here?

[via PC Mag]