Ethernet over Copper breathes new life into telecom's wired medium

Sean Buckley, FierceTelecomWhile it's clear that a growing base of business customers want Ethernet, the reality is many aren't connected to a service provider's fiber facility--the dominant method to deliver Ethernet--and probably won't be anytime soon.

One way to close the so-called fiber gap that has long existed in the Ethernet delivery market is Ethernet over Copper (EoC). Once thought of a niche service, EoC enables service providers to leverage the near-ubiquitous copper plant that's already in the ground.

FierceTelecom addresses how service providers are delivering EoC to address business' desire for EoC services in our latest special report, Competitive carriers hone their Ethernet over Copper skills.

In this report, we chronicle how a growing group of competitive service providers, including Integra Telecom, PAETEC (Nasdaq: PAET) subsidiary Intellifiber, MegaPath, TelePacific, and XO Communications (OTC BB: XOHO) have been driving the EoC market with ongoing deployments in their network footprints.

Despite the obvious limitations with copper-based facilities, the advent of pair bonding, NxT1 bonding, VDSL2 and vectoring are pushing the boundaries of data rates delivered over copper. Couple these new innovations with a growing audience of businesses that want to have a service medium that allows them to scale bandwidth more flexibly than purchasing more expensive T1 circuits beyond 1.5 Mbps, EoC has a long life ahead of it. 

EoC is resonating not only with SMBs, but even with medium and large businesses that have smaller sites across multiple geographies, meaning that for competitive providers EoC is a business service opportunity that's ripe for the picking.

I encourage you to take a look at our new EoC report and of course let us know what you think.--Sean