Speaking at the recent NetEvents 2011 APAC Press & Analyst Summit in Thailand, MEF President Nan Chen outlined the proceedings of the MEF’s last quarterly meeting for 2011, held in Singapore last month, and their particular relevance for APAC business. Key issues for the region include Carrier Ethernet Multiple Classes of Service (Multi-CoS), Ethernet mobile backhaul, and the rise of wholesale Ethernet services – and all three issues were addressed by new technical specifications progressed at the Quarterly meeting. He also announced strong support for the new MEF Carrier Ethernet Certified Professional (CECP) certification program, which is already boosting the skills availability in a highly competitive market. Nan Chen explained how the letter ballot acceptance of the MEF’s Phase 2 on Multi-CoS and Mobile Backhaul Implementation Agreements – extending MEF 23 and MEF 22 respectively – is an especially important issue for the region where, without a strong legacy network of fixed line connections, it is doubly attractive to leapfrog traditional leased line connections from cell cites to core network and go for an all-Ethernet solution. According to Infonetics’ Michael Howard: “IP/Ethernet MBH is the universally accepted solution to lower the costs of growing mobile data traffic, and to facilitate migration to next generation all-IP/Ethernet networks. This two Implementation Agreements will be especially welcome for addressing explosive growth of mobile Internet traffic, as well as pointing the way to simpler 4G migration.”

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Executive Summary

The wholesale Carrier Ethernet market surpassed Frost & Sullivan’s predicted growth rates, with the 2010 market revenues exceeding $770.0 million; nearly $50 million more than forecasted in our previous (N73A-63) study. Wireless carriers, as a customer segment for wholesale Ethernet, continued to be the single largest segment driving double digit revenue growth for the market in 2010.

Wholesale carriers saw great demand for Ethernet, both for mobile backhaul (tower/cell site access) and aggregation, and this trend will continue throughout the forecast period. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) continue to buy high speed Ethernet ports for IP transit applications, and represent a significant revenue share of the market. Service providers report that in 2010, the wireline market really started to take off, with a significant increase in demand from the traditional interexchange carriers (IXCs) and competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) for Ethernet. Ethernet is attractive for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) because it can be offered economically with a lower price per megabit than any other service; can be offered in a range of bandwidth, and for a variety of private line and Local Area Network (LAN) extension services. 

In terms of service types wholesaled, metro access and E-Line (point-to-point) services continue to dominate the revenue share. There is a noticeable change in market adoption of high capacity port speeds –1 GigE –however, 10/100 Mbps ports continue to see growth.

The impact of Ethernet exchanges on the wholesale market was limited in 2010. CSPs interviewed for this study reported limited activity, in terms of selling and buying services at Ethernet exchanges. While a number of carriers are connected to one or another exchange in the market, a very small amount of traffic is actually being exchanged. Reasons contributing to this lack of interest include service provider disappointment with the ineffective mediator role played by exchange operators, service pricing, and limited connectivity to Tier 2/Tier 3 carriers/cities.

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Delivering Ultra-Fast, Reliable International Capacity From New York to Brazil

GlobeNet, an international wholesale provider of submarine capacity, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Oi (Bovespa: TNLP3, TNLP4, TMAR3, TMAR5, TMAR6 and NYSE: TNE), announces today that it offers financial markets the lowest latency Express route between the Americas.  Leveraging its more than 22,000 kilometers of submarine fiber optic cable connecting the Americas, GlobeNet delivers ultra-fast and reliable international capacity from New York, New York to Sao Paulo, Brazil with average round trip latency of 110 milliseconds.

Financial market firms such as hedge funds, brokers, market data providers and Exchanges are all vying to obtain the fastest, most reliable connectivity in order to conduct faster trades and financial transactions.  In this highly competitive marketplace, the time it takes for a financial trade to be made - often within milliseconds - can mean the difference in millions of dollars gained or lost.

ST. LOUIS, March 21, 2011 Charter Communications, Inc. today announced that Charter Business has launched new carrier interconnect capabilities in five strategic locations throughout the U.S. to provide highly efficient wholesale access to its extensive fiber network. 

Charter will offer Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) certified carrier Ethernet services from its new locations ranging from 10 megabits per second (Mbps) to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps). The service is designed to meet carrier performance, monitoring and service level agreement requirements.

"Charter Business has made a significant investment to build diverse and redundant capabilities at these initial five interconnect sites," said Jim McGann, Senior Vice President of Charter Business. "We are strategically focused on the carrier market; enabling high-capacity, fully redundant interconnect capabilities via either a private cross-connect or our Carrier Ethernet Exchange partners."

U.S. Wholesale Ethernet Services: A Five-Year Market Forecast

Wholesale Ethernet is finally emerging as a major, thriving U.S. market. While retail Ethernet has boomed for several years, the wholesale market has been regarded as something of a market backwater until recently. Carriers, resellers, and Web-based operators have gained confidence in public Ethernet as a wholesale building block of their services. Most wholesale data service requirements increasingly include an Ethernet component, even while wholesale Ethernet still requires significant explanation in some corners of the market.

The combination of accelerating bandwidth demand with lengthening experience and comfort with public Ethernet, along with the service's improving standards and continually declining costs, have brought increasing attention and growth to wholesale Ethernet, which is now being driven heavily by the start of a major shift of wireless backhaul toward the service. The promise of mass migration of the fast-growing cellular backhaul segment from TDM is infusing massive new energy into this market, which is now pacing already rapid overall Ethernet services growth.

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