Even at its projected growth level, however, AT&T will only be at 10% to 20% of Akamai’s CDN capacity, Vorhaus pointed out.

“No service provider is going to be able to come in and build this sort of capacity right off the bat just because they are AT&T or Verizon,” Vorhaus said. “That’s why Level 3 [Communications] bought a CDN company [Savvis’s]. And it makes a lot of sense for AT&T, Verizon, BT or even Level 3 to buy one of the many CDN companies out there now.”

Limelight Networks, the number-two player to Akamai, is a prime acquisition target because, while the company has an excellent customer base and more volume than most other CDN companies, the loss of a patent court case to Akamai weakened Limelight’s position and could put the company at some risk financially, Vorhaus said in his report.

It’s also possible, however, that Akamai itself, with 70% of the market to date, will choose to acquire Limelight.

“Limelight specifically being acquired is something I expect to happen,” Vorhaus said. “There has been talk of Level 3 buying them to continue to build out their network and talk of Akamai buying them. I think the most likely scenario is that a large service provider such as AT&T, Verizon or BT would stand the most to gain to be able to take on all that deployed capacity and, more than that, instant credibility in the market.”