Ethernet Services Market To Hit $22.2 Billion By 2009: Report

The global Ethernet services market is on fire, according to a new report from Infonetics Research, having more than doubled last year and likely to almost triple again by 2009.

In "Ethernet Services Market Size and Forecast," principal analyst Michael Howard notes that the market reached $2.5 billion in revenues and forecast a 276% leap to $22.2 billion by 2009. A lot of that growth is in Asia, which is by far the hottest regional market for Ethernet services with a 40% share of worldwide revenues. Europe, the Middle East and Africa account for more than 30% of revenues and North America for more than 20%.

There are a number of reasons for the impressive market growth, according to Howard. "On the end-user side, many companies are hungry for more bandwidth and many are looking to reduce their WAN costs," he said in a statement. "Ethernet offers the only way to achieve both due to its superior bandwidth capacities and cheaper prices per bit. Service providers are also looking for ways to connect their various sites with higher bandwidths at cheaper price per bit, and Gigabit Ethernet point-to-point wholesale services meet this demand."

About three-quarters of all Ethernet services revenues derive from retail services like Internet, Ethernet private line, and transparent local area network (LAN) services. The other 25% is from wholesale services, particularly point-to-point Gigabit Ethernet links.