For the past few newsletters we’ve been reporting on the findings of Kubernan’s Metro Ethernet State-of-the-Market report. As a result of this we received a communication from Keao Caindec, chief marketing officer for Yipes Enterprise Services that we would like to share.

One of the points that we’ve made is that the lack service availability – or at least the appearance of a lack of service availability – has been a major stumbling block to adoption. In particular, many enterprises seem reluctant to support a mix of services and would like to wait until service is nearly ubiquitous to deploy Metro Ethernet.

Keao replied to this, “The view that Ethernet is limited only to sites with fiber is a misperception. Yipes, a leading global Ethernet services provider addressed this issue years ago. Technology to operate Ethernet over TDM (T, DS3, OC3) and copper (VDSL) has been around for a while. Yipes has been using these technologies for many years. By providing a fully-managed Ethernet service, we are able to deliver Ethernet over anything (fiber, TDM, copper) on a global basis. Furthermore, we have more than 10 Ethernet network-to-network interfaces (E-NNIs) that allow us to leverage the networks of other Ethernet providers to provide near ubiquitous global Ethernet services coverage.”

We don’t disagree, but, as with all marketing, perception is reality, so we see the need for more customer education in this arena. We’ll also point out that of all the service providers that responded only 50% of the needed sites were anticipated to have coverage. We’ll look forward to hearing from more service providers concerning their roll-out plans.

On a second point, we had mentioned that the No. 1 driver was higher speed access at a lower cost. (In a newsletter published after we received this response, we pointed out that cost was not the only driver, but that features like disaster recovery and business continuity were also major issues.)

Keao added a further explanation of how Yipes sees this issue, stating: “Initially, many customers evaluating Ethernet are attracted by the potential cost savings. End users quickly find that what they really want is a lot more network for a little more cost.

“Let's deconstruct what end users might mean when they say that they want higher speed access at lower cost.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.