Rob Powell had an interesting CDN write-up in his Telecom Rambling blog (http://www.itaoran.com/2008/05/cdns-and-owning-the-network/#more-31). He posed the question of whether owning a fiber network is an important advantage to a CDN provider. Akamai might claim not; AT&T and Level 3 likely would have a contrary view. Rob, it appeared at first, was going to straddle the fence with an “It depends”.
Thankfully, he didn’t stop there. Instead, he postulated that fiber ownership gives engineers more design possibilities. In our bandwidth babylon world of ours, more degrees of freedom will be increasingly important.
Why then is Akamai the CDN leader? They were the first mover. They have unique and important technology. They established a brand. All of this matters a bunch, so don’t count them out. Nonetheless, they will have long term vulnerability due to the lack of fiber in their diet. My guess, they combine with a fiber carrier sometime in the next five years.
I will add a few more thoughts on this topic tomorrow.
Nice post Rob!
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