* Customers want 10Mbps to 100Mbps Metro Ethernet
According to a recently published report by Kubernan, Metro Ethernet is poised to be the next generation of access technology. The report, based on an extensive survey of both enterprise customers and providers of the service, finds that 36% of the enterprise respondents indicated that they already had Metro Ethernet services in production and/or that they were in the implementation process. The biggest single barrier to this adoption rate seems to be the service availability – a situation that the service providers will soon be remedying.
In addition to higher speed access at lower cost being an obvious driver for the services, a stark contrast was found between the service providers and the perceived benefits. In particular, improved/simplified options for business continuity was the third-ranking overall driver for end users (cited by 39%), while only 19% of the service providers saw this as a major driver.
The study also found that there was a definite “sweet spot” in the speed range desired for these services. While there was moderate demand for all speed ranges, the peak was clearly in the 10Mbps to 100Mbps range. This is most reasonable. On the high end, 100Mbps leaving the campus/office is still a tremendous amount of bandwidth for many users. At the same time, on the lower end of the speed spectrum, there is tremendous competition in the sub-10Mbps range. In particular, while these services can be delivered by mid-band Ethernet services (see this newsletter and related follow-up discussions), they also are increasingly available as DSL and cable services which already deliver up to 6Mbps in many areas.
The report, with accompanying earlier releases of podcasts and phonecasts, is available at Webtorials.
