It’s clear now that the preferred route for most carriers into the CDN business is to partner with a pure-play provider. Yesterday it was Telus dipping its toes into the water via a partnership with EdgeCast. The Canadian service provider will now be able to offer CDN services to content providers north of the border. For a secondary market like this, such a partnership makes a lot of sense.
According to Dan Rayburn (who has further analysis worth reading), Telus had previously had a limited relationship with Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings) but was unable to take it where they wanted to go. EdgeCast has been perhaps the most agressive CDN out there in partnering with carriers directly, e.g. Global Crossing, Deutsche Telekom, AAPT, and others. It certainly seems to be working for them, though the full opportunity still seems yet to materialize. At what Rayburn estimates is about $20M in annual revenue, they’ll need some more partners to catch up to Limelight, Level 3, and CDNetworks – let alone Akamai.
When it comes to carriers building their own, it’s really quite stunning how cold the trail has become. Other than Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings), who continues to blaze an increasingly independent trail, the entire concept seems to be comatose. Anyone heard from Teliasonera or BT about the CDNs they were going to build? Even AT&T is awfully quiet on the subject, even though they were probably the furthest along and the capex required is a rounding error for them.
I’m still wondering where Velocix will pop up again, under the wings of Alcatel-Lucent of course.
If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!
Categories: Content Distribution
Join Our LinkedIn Group
I wish Level 3 the best, but that you have to wonder how much stronger that CDN would be now competitively if Digital Island had never sold out.
and wiltel, broadwing, icg, FPL and others. L3 is where good, innovative carriers go to die
Does this mean that Edgecast is going to partner with AT & T? Probably, they’ll probably buy them too just like BitGravity partnered with Tata and now was bought. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sell to AT & T sometime soon.
Brian you said exactly what I was going to say. Edgecast has several series of funding and I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually sold out to ATT or Juniper. BTW, David your right level3 is good.