Industry news

Market for carrier Ethernet products set for growth

The worldwide market for carrier Ethernet products is expected to increase significantly in the coming years, new research has suggested.

Research from Bharatbook.com suggested that the market for these services will increase in value from $1.4 billion (£700 million) in 2007 to nearly $6 billion (£3 billion) in 2012.

The report noted that more and more businesses will switch to long-haul virtual private networks (VPNs) as carriers increasingly offer Layer 2 public network carrier services that extend Ethernet beyond the LAN.

"Bharat Book Bureau's research suggests that the many-to-many E-LAN service will be the fastest growing part of carrier Ethernet because the economic advantages of Ethernet actually increase exponentially (as opposed to proportionally) in relation to the number of points connected," the researcher concluded.

"And though we expect to see an accelerating pace of Ethernet adoption across the board, we are not ready to predict that Ethernet is ready to take over the world.

"Generally speaking, private line and frame relay customers are not ready to or interested in deserting longstanding services, so the migration to Ethernet is going to be slow and steady."