AT&T ranks No. 1 for the fifth consecutive year in Vertical Systems Group‘s latest carrier-managed SD-WAN leaderboard, while Verizon jumped from fourth to third.

AT&T finished first in the Year-End 2022 U.S. Carrier-Managed SD-WAN Services, followed by Comcast Business, Verizon, Hughes, Lumen Technologies, Windstream, TPx, Zayo and Aryaka. These service providers each had 2% or more of the installed and billable carrier managed SD-WAN customer sites in the United States as of Dec. 31.

Comcast retained the second spot while Verizon leapt over Hughes to claim the third position. Lumen continues to rank fifth and Windstream remains in sixth. TPx advanced from the challenge tier to the seventh position. And Zayo debuted in eighth position with sites from its QOS Networks acquisition, moving up from the market player tier.

Aryaka dropped into the ninth and final position from seventh.

Rick Malone is principal of Vertical Systems Group.

Vertical Systems Group’s Rick Malone

“The managed SD-WAN market broadened significantly in 2022, with businesses and enterprises of all sizes transitioning away from legacy services,” he said. “Increased competition led to market share gains for challenge tier and market player companies.”

SD-WAN Challengers

The 2022 challenge tier increased from three to five companies as Cox Business, Spectrum Enterprise and T-Mobile moved up from the market player tier. Fusion Connect and MetTel retained their challenge tier citations.

The challenge tier consists of companies with between 1% and 2% of U.S. market share. The market players are providers with less than 1% carrier managed SD-WAN services share.

Challenges for 2023 cited by SD-WAN service providers include managing security integration with evolving secure access service edge (SASE) and security service edge (SSE) solutions, helping enterprises best fit SD-WAN technology to requirements, and supply chain delays.

Five of the leaderboard companies have attainted MEF 3.0 SD-WAN Service Certification. Those are AT&T, Comcast Business, Verizon, Lumen and Windstream.