Customer installations of Carrier Ethernet services in the U.S. will reach one million ports in 2018, according to new Ethernet research from Vertical Systems Group.
The projected figure includes all retail Ethernet services at speeds ranging from sub-10Mbps to more than 10Gbps.
“U.S. market demand for business-class Carrier Ethernet services is solid. Enterprises and SMBs will make purchase decisions to deploy hundreds of thousands of new Ethernet ports throughout the next several years, facilitated by a range of service options and competitive price points that have never been better,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “Following a 26 percent increase in U.S. customer port installations last year, growth projections are on track to hit the one million mark by 2018.”
Ethernet has been seeing ongoing growth: U.S. installations of Ethernet service ports jumped 26% in 2013, the firm said.
Ranked by port share, the nine providers on Vertical’s 2013 U.S. Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD were AT&T,Verizon, tw telecom, CenturyLink, Time Warner Cable, Cox, XO, Comcast and Level 3.
Port growth was led by strong market demand for higher speed Ethernet access to dedicated IP/MPLS VPN sites. Layer 2/3 service interconnection available from each of the market-leading incumbent carriers and competitive providers is positioned as a network migration solution for existing VPN customers. As a result, this was the fastest growing application overall in 2013 based on new ports installed. Cable MSOs drove port growth by targeting small and medium businesses within metro markets with aggressive offers to upgrade lower speed Internet and point-to-point connections to Ethernet.
Cloud and data center connectivity were key applications for 1Gbps and 10+ Gigabit Ethernet services. Driven by ongoing IT virtualization, there was an uptick in customer purchases of higher speed Ethernet ports during the second half of last year. Ethernet over direct fiber was the most widely deployed access technology for these implementations due to customer requirements for bandwidth scalability and application performance.
“The pace of Ethernet customer port installations in 2013 exceeded expectations,” said Cochran. “Migration of legacy services to Ethernet continued to be the most significant market driver, while cloud connectivity more clearly emerged as a strategic growth opportunity for higher speed Ethernet offerings.”
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