Report: Metro Ethernet Is Being Rapidly Adopted

Customer demand for broadband services is compelling broadband service providers worldwide to adopt Ethernet delivery options as fast or faster than their earlier forecasts, said a report from Infonetics Research.

"Ethernet is on pace toward metro service dominance over the next five to ten years," said Michael Howard, Infonetics principal analyst, in a statement. "If manufacturers can deliver carrier-class Ethernet products with end-to-end QoS, it will speed up the adoption curve."

Howard said Infonetics examined 37 top tier service providers and found different companies were adopting different methods for delivering Ethernet technology. Delivery modes include SONET/SDH rings leveraging installed infrastructures, building separate overlay Ethernet nets, or utilizing existing IP/MPLS networks.

Howard also found a distinct move by providers to move from ATM to Ethernet in DSL networks with a significant percentage of the study's respondents with DSLAMs now planning to drop ATM DSLAMs to move to Ethernet uplinks and IP/Ethernet-based DSLAMS.

Infonetics said there is a wholesale move towards offering packetized voice as an Ethernet service " one-third of the survey sampling said the service was offered last year while 84 percent plan to offer it by the beginning of next year."A wide variety of technologies is being used to deliver Ethernet services, principally Ethernet over fiber," the report stated. "By 2006, Ethernet over copper (T1,E1/J1, etc.) will be used by two-thirds of the respondents, and Ethernet over WiFi and Ethernet over WiMAX will each be used by about a third."