Insight Research: Wireless backhaul will help triple Ethernet spending by 2016

Offering greater flexibility in terms of bandwidth and features at lower costs than traditional legacy TDM services, Ethernet access continues be the soup du jour of the network services market.

By 2016, Insight Research has forecast in its new market analysis study Carriers and Ethernet Services: Public Ethernet in Metro & Wide Area Networks, 2011-2016 that U.S. enterprises and consumers will spend over $44 billion on carrier Ethernet services.

Insight Research Ethernet revenues 2009-2016

As more incumbent and competitive service providers alike expand their respective wide area and metro Ethernet service portfolios, Insight argues the market will grow from $4 billion in 2011 to nearly $11.1 billion by 2016.

A key ingredient of Ethernet growth over traditional TDM services during this period will be the ongoing emergence of higher bandwidth 40G and 100G services.

While retail Ethernet services will be a contributor of Ethernet growth, Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research, believes that wholesale wireless backhaul presents a very big opportunity for service providers. This opportunity will continue to grow as wireless operators look to scale their backhaul networks to support higher speed 4G LTE services that are surpassing the legacy T1 circuits that were used primarily to support voice and some lower speed data.

"Wireless backhaul is the fastest-growing sector within the Ethernet marketplace," Rosenberg says. "Ethernet can provide the necessary backhaul at lower unit costs and with greater flexibility than the older technology." 

Rosenberg added that in addition to wireless backhaul, the Ethernet services market "continues to be paced by voracious bandwidth demands from its longstanding key verticals such as finance, schools, government and healthcare--whose data transmission requirements continue to grow rapidly."

For more:
- see the release

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