AT&T Keeps Carrier-Managed SD-WAN Leaderboard Lead, Comcast Rises

AT&T triumphed again in Vertical Systems Group‘s latest SD-WAN leaderboard, but Comcast Business continues to drive SD-WAN momentum.

AT&T finished first in the Year-End 2021 U.S. Carrier Managed SD-WAN Services, followed by Hughes and Comcast. Vertical Systems Group (VSG) has shared U.S. carrier SD-WAN rankings since 2018. AT&T has won each year.

Source: Vertical Systems Group

Comcast ranked eighth in the 2018 leaderboard. It leapfrogged Fusion to seventh the next year, then jumped Windstream and Aryaka to fourth in 2020. AT&T, Hughes and Verizon stayed in the top three spots respectively for the first three years, but Comcast is now holding onto silver.

VSG reported that Comcast’s site share increased from both organic growth and Masergy sites it added via acquisition.

“The U.S. Managed SD-WAN services market emerged from the pandemic in 2021 with solid growth in new site installations, driven by accelerated network transformations and more flexible solutions for customers,” said Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “Competition is heating up as evidenced by the shake up in top provider rankings on our year-end 2021 U.S. Leaderboard benchmark.”

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Vertical Systems Group’s Rick Malone

These companies, with the exception of Hughes and Aryaka, leverage a technology partner for their SD-WAN platform. Those platform partners include Cisco, VMware, Fortinet and Versa, However, many of these carriers partner with multiple providers.

Check out Dell’Oro Group’s latest study to see how those underlying pure-play SD-WAN players are faring.

Lumen, Windstream and Aryaka rounded out the leaderboard. The leaderboard consists of companies with 2% or more of installed and billable managed SD-WAN customer sites.

Fusion Connect, MetTel and TPx landed in the challenger tier.