Business connectivity still paying off

The economic news may not be all bad for telecom--well, maybe most of it is, but at least one sector continues to see strong demand. "Enterprise customer demand remains strong for lower cost, higher speed access lines for site connectivity to business services, particularly IP/MPLS VPNs, Ethernet, DIA (Dedicated Internet Access)," according to research firm Vertical Systems Group Principal Rick Malone. So says Malone in a press release promoting new research from VSG on the business wireline market.

Though growth in T-1s and related connections has leveled off, the firm says that business Ethernet and business cable are the fastest growing access segments, followed by OC-3/OC-12+, Business DSL and FT3/T3. "In the past five years, aggregate access bandwidth has more than tripled as a result of customer network migration to larger capacity access connections," Malone says.

Meanwhile, Forrester Research is saying that residential customers will keep their broadband connections, despite mounting economic pressures. That may ease the fears of some in the industry who have been expecting broadband disconnections as a trend still to be realized.

However, Forrester says new broadband adoption may be delayed, and some customers may cut add-on service and features from their service bundles.

For more:
- Here's the Vertical Systems Group press release [1]
- CED magazine has a post [2] on Forrester's comments

Related articles
Sprint announced an IP-MPLS VPN monitoring offering [3]
Ethernet has been a big business for Cablevision [4]