Verizon Launches CDN Geared Specifically for E-Commerce
Since it acquired Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider EdgeCast Networks, Verizon Digital Media Services has undertaken major expansion of the CDN network, having added presence in São Paulo and more than 20 other cities around the world.
Context & Ripple Effects
Seven months after Verizon paid more than $350 million to buy EdgeCast Networks — a company that had raised just $6 million back in 2007 before growing into one of the independent CDNs — Verizon Digital Media Services is showing what it plans to do with the asset: a content delivery product aimed specifically at e-commerce, built on a network expanded into São Paulo and more than 20 other cities since the deal closed.
The move lands on top of two other threads from the corpus: the acquisition brought Verizon over 6,000 existing CDN customers (confirmed by Verizon itself), and in April 2014 Netflix signed a direct traffic deal with Verizon after doing the same with Comcast — evidence the carrier was already monetizing delivery capacity at the network's edge. An e-commerce-specific tier extends that from raw traffic transit toward packaged, application-aware delivery.
First-order effects
- E-commerce sites gain a vertically positioned delivery option from a carrier-scale network operator, while EdgeCast's legacy customers now sit inside a much larger footprint spanning São Paulo and 20+ new points of presence.
Second-order effects
- Incumbent CDN specialists like Akamai and Amazon CloudFront face price and bundling pressure from a telco that can cross-sell delivery against connectivity — the same dynamic behind Netflix paying Verizon directly for interconnection in April 2014.
Third-order effects
- If carriers keep packaging CDN as an add-on to network access, delivery shifts from a standalone service market toward a feature bundled into transport contracts — pushing pure-play CDNs toward application-level differentiation or consolidation.
The trend: Telecom operators are converting acquired CDN assets into vertically targeted delivery products, moving value capture from generic traffic transit toward application-specific services sold alongside network access.