Abstract: An approach for opportunistic caching of streaming media data is provided to facilitate efficient use of forward transmission resources of a broadband communications system. The approach includes receiving, by a second communications terminal, a first content response transmitted by a first content server, via a broadcast/multicast communications medium, in response to a first content request of a first client device associated with a first communications terminal, wherein the first content response includes first data content requested by the first client device via the first communications terminal. The approach further comprises determining, by a cache controller of a cache storage device of the second communications terminal, to store at least the first data content of the first content response in the local cache storage device associated with the second communications terminal, wherein the determination to store is based on one or more criteria associated with the first content response.