Report: Ethernet Momentum To Push Fiber Growth

The growing momentum of Ethernet usage in the enterprise is propelling much of the boom in fiber that, in turn, will propel a 37 percent compound annual growth rate of fiber-access networks, according to a new study.

"Ethernet is encroaching on ATM-based technologies," said Sterling Perrin of IDC in an interview Thursday. "Ethernet has matured. It's simple. It's well-known. It's ubiquitous. It's very low cost." In a new study authored by Perrin, who is senior research analyst of Optical Networks at the market-research firm, IDC predicted that the fiber-access-equipment market will jump from $503 million, in 2003, to $2.4 billion, by 2008.

Noting that a wholesale migration from copper to fiber began relatively recently, Perrin said the changeover will take decades to accomplish. He added that the market will be somewhat skewed with different regions, different telecommunications service providers, and different technologies logging different growth timetables.

"The RBOCs [former regional Bell operating companies] are looking to push fiber anywhere they have DSL today," he said. "They are looking at high-speed broadband and at doing video over fiber." Perrin added that the RBOCs tend to be somewhat skewed in their approach to fiber--their consumer markets tend to be more ATM-based (asynchronous transfer mode), while their business customers are more interested in Ethernet-based solutions.

Enterprise and business customers who already have Ethernet LANs are more attuned to adding Ethernet in their WLANs, and the best way to accomplish the build-out is to add fiber. Gradually, Ethernet will become the dominant technology replacing ATM-based passive optical networks (APON) and G.983 technologies, Perrin said.Another finding of the IDC study is that fiber installation driven by Ethernet usage is roaring ahead in the Asia/Pacific region, propelled by low-cost deployment and a distancing from older APON technologies. Perrin found that millions of Asian subscribers are being connected to fiber at very low costs. He also observed that revenue from fiber from business customers accounted for the biggest piece of fiber revenue, although the number of residential subscribers using fiber is higher than is the number of business users.

At the same time, the U.S. RBOCs remain committed to the older APON technology meaning that "fiber-access networks will not roll out as homogenously as the Ethernet supporters would like," Perrin said.

Of the RBOCs, Verizon is the most aggressive in rolling out fiber, Perrin said, noting that the RBOC has begun unveiling a high-speed optical-fiber network. The Verizon Fiber To the Premises (FTTP) program calls for one million homes in nine states to be passed by the technology by the end of the year.