Sparkle Enters CDN Market, Who’s Left?

Telecom Italia Sparkle plans to formally announce its entry into the CDN market via a resale agreement with CDNetworks, according to Dan Rayburn. If there were an award given to carriers for ‘Most Likely to be Forgotten by the US media’, Sparkle would probably win it.  But their network is international in scope and they are big in Europe.  Reselling the services of an existing CDN is perhaps the least aggressive way to enter the market, but nowadays if you run an IP network it is almost imperative that you have CDN in your portfolio somewhere.  

Dan also predicts another major carrier will enter the CDN market next week.  Hmmm, who’s left?  At this point, it’s easier to think about which major backbones do NOT have a CDN offering (or announced they will soon) than which ones do.  Let’s see, who would be on that list:

Cogent
Sprint
Qwest
TINet
XO
Colt

There are others of course (feel free to suggest), but those spring to mind at the moment.  Of these, which is likeliest to take the plunge?  I could easily see Sprint selecting a partner out there, though they’re not likely to roll their own.  Cogent might…  Their pattern would be to find a small existing CDN desperate enough to be bought for pocket change, which isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.  Of the others, it seems less likely but you never know.

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Categories: Content Distribution · Internet Backbones