Updated List Of Carriers and Telcos Entering The CDN Market

There's been a lot of changes in the CDN industry in the past few quarters with many carriers and telcos entering the market, mostly via partnerships with other CDNs. Here's an updated list of CDNs in the market, broken down between pure-play CDNs versus non pure-play vendors like carriers and telcos. (To make the list easier to find on my blog, all you have to do is go to www.cdnlist.com for the latest update)

Non Pure-Play CDNs

• AT&T
• Broadmedia
• BT (will launch by year's end)
• Deutsche Telekom (partnered with EdgeCast)
• Global Crossing (reselling Limelight and EdgeCast)
• Internap (acquired VitalStream)
• Level 3 (acquired CDN assets of SAVVIS, acquired Servecast)
• NaviSite (reselling EdgeCast)
• NTT Communications
• Pacnet (partnered with Internap)
  
• PCCW
• Reliance Globalcom (partnered with Internap)
• Tata Communications (partnered and invested in BitGravity)
• TeliaSonera (will launch in April)

Pure-Play CDNs

• Accelia
• Abacast
• Advection.net
• Akamai
• Amazon Web Services
• BitGravity
• BitTorrent
• CacheFly
• ChinaCache
• CDNetworks
• Cotendo
  
• Conviva
• Digital Fountain (acquired by Qualcomm 2/09)
• EdgeCast
• EdgeStream
• Grid Networks (merged with GMS 4/09)
• Highwinds
• Itiva
• Limelight Networks
• Mirror Image
• Move Networks
• Pando Networks
• Panther Express (acquired by CDNetworks 2/09)
• PEER1
• Real Broadcast Network
  
• Technicolor
• Velocix
• Voxel.net
• Vusion

Before anyone starts saying it's not fair to put all these folks on a list, please read my disclaimer in my last CDN post which explains many of the differences between the CDN vendors in the market.

Comments

[Gregor]

Hi Dan, I would like to see this list differentiated. As you say, there are many definitions of what a CDN is. Your definition is, well... your definition. I know some of the ones in your list who are small or only regionally operational, USA or Asia only. And I know some who are not in your list but have global customers. If companies compete in the same market with similar services, then they shoud be listed.

My suggestion is to do a breakdown:

- Global pure play CDN's (Akamai, Limelight for instance)

- Regional pure play CDN's
StreamZilla (they have customers on every continent)
Did you see their new website? Like their approach!

- Reselling CDN's
Carriers who pretend to be a CDN but in effect resell third party CDN's

- Overlay CDN's
I expect more of these in the future. These CDN's rent server capacity and roll out their own CDN on multiple networks.

I also recommend to split between web caching CDN's, streaming CDN's and proprietary technology CDN's. The latter are for instance P2P based or like bitgravity.

Furthermore, I would like to see whether or not these CDNs infringe patents. Are they all using similar technologies? Caching? Global filesystems? DNS redirection? GLBS?

And last but not least: who are the loss leaders? Limelight for instance lost $13 million last quarter. Which ones have deep pockets? Which ones are seriously losing money? Which ones have serious debts to banks or investors? Which ones are profitable?

[Dan Rayburn]

Hi Gregor, combined, those are too many variables to break out vendors by. But some of them I already have broken out.

- You can find a list of regional service providers and P2P based providers here: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2008/05/list-of-video-d.html

- We already know who has deep pockets based on the money they have raised. You can see a list of those companies and the amounts at: www.cdnfunding.com

- How can we know who is infringing on patents or not? Only the courts can decide on that and all anyone else can do is speculate.

- As for loss leaders, they all are. Akamai is the only one that is profitable as a company, but we don't know if their CDN product for video is profitable as they don't break out those numbers.

I would disagree that my definition of a CDN is simply my own definition. I don't decide who is or is not a CDN, customers decide and the market decides. Vendors can call themselves a CDN all day long if they want, but if content owners don't think of them as a CDN, then they aren't.

Many times folks will write in and say their company is a CDN and should be listed as one. But when I ask them for one reference where the media, industry, analyst or customer has thought of them as a CDN like the others in the space, they can't come up with any examples. That is the market deciding they are not a CDN, not me.

[Ronald Northern]

Hello Dan ~ Have you compiled a list of third party CDN resellers? Start-Ups per say and not Carriers? Regards and Thanks.

[Dan Rayburn]

Hi Ronald, that I haven't. Way too many to list and not as easy to tell who is reselling whom.

[Yossi Wellingstein]

Dan, Bravo for maintaining the list. We keep hearing about RayV doing great work with live broadcast. Wouldn't you consider them as a CDN ?

[Dan Rayburn]

Hi Yossi, RayV has not even launched in the market yet so we can't classify them as anything except a company that's still in beta with no product offering out in the market as of yet.

[Kulvir Chambore]

Hi,

I was hoping that you could help - I am trying to get a list of the top 10 CDN companies in the world - in order.

I would appreciate any assistance.

Kind Regards

Kulvir Chambore
02073300816