complete product portfolio need

This comment from Ike Elliott's Telecosm is interesting as more networks might find it necessary to get into CDN services:

>>CEO James Crowe answered by saying that Level 3 is seeing "no slowdown in aggregate demand," and suggested that competitors that are reporting a slowdown have product portfolios that are too narrow. Level 3, with a broader product portfolio, is seeing cross-product substitution, such as content delivery networks substituting for dedicated Internet access, or private line services substituting for VPNs, etc. Crowe was suggesting that companies that don't offer a complete product portfolio stand to lose market share when customers substitute one product for another. He was also suggesting that companies that don't offer a complete product portfolio are unreliable measures of aggregate network services demand, because these narrow product portfolios don't capture this substitution effect.