Level 3 CDN strategy

Dan Rayburn has a very interesting interview with Jim Crowe, CEO of Level 3, about their CDN business. Hard to summarize anything, I suggest you read both the interview, at this link, and the follow up at Telecom Rumbling.

The comments, from blog.streamingmedia.com, are somehow Internap related:

>> Nice job, Dan. Is there anyone out there likely to challenge what seem to be the big three going into next year: Akamai, Limelight, and Level 3? Internap has been imploding of course, who else might step forward? Panther?

Posted by: Rob Powell | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 01:35 AM

Thanks for the link Rob. To answer your question, Panther won't be a challenge to the big three. Panther can grow, but they are doing under $20 million this year in total revenue, don't support streaming, live broadcasting, Flash streaming or any pieces of the ecosystem. But they are not trying to be Limelight in size or product feature set so it's not a knock on their service. They are happy being smaller and staying that way.

I don't see anyone challenging the big three. CDNetworks is the only other CDN who is going more than $25 million a year, but as of now, more than 90% of that revenue comes from Asia, which is a lot smaller market for video CDN services than the U.S. is.

If you look at purely CDN revenue, no one is going to come anywhere close to Akamai, Limelight and Level 3 by the end of next year.