Ethernet vs T1 in Replacing Legacy Services
Business Ethernet enables carriers to offer low-cost network services at up to 50% below the price of legacy protocols, making it a strong substitute for T1/T3, frame relay and ATM. The low price points customers have come to expect for Ethernet bandwidth may present a challenge for incumbent carriers, which will try to keep Ethernet vs T1 prices high so as not be dragged down the margin slope, especially in competition with their own TDM private line services. They will be challenged in the metro-area Ethernet market by cable operators that do not have an installed private line base to protect. Here at OSSTelco we partner with carriers that provide up-to-date ethernet services, that can offer you the most cost efficient, reliable solution.
Bandwidth Continues to Climb
Demand for bandwidth by enterprises and service providers has been growing at 60% and 100% per year, respectively. This has led major transport providers to upgrade their optical backbones networks to as high as 40 Gbps, and many optical carriers including Level 3 have deployed 10 Gbps LAN- PHY Ethernet interfaces, which offer bandwidth at significantly lower cost compared with OC-192. Verizon Business and AT&T have also both added 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces in the past year.
Quality of Service (QoS) for Business Ethernet
Customers expanding the use of Ethernet as a comprehensive business network service will want some ability to prioritize real-time and mission-critical traffic, and the growing business use of VoIP is leading to increased demand for QoS to ensure that real-time traffic be given absolute priority. QoS for Ethernet, once rare, is becoming more common, although approaches vary from Layer 2 traffic separation and prioritization (using P-bit marking or MEF 10.1) to Layer 3 packet differentiation (IP DiffServ), the latter being most common on the VPLS (Ethernet over MPLS).
Increasing Competition
In recent years, RBOCs, IXCs, CLECs and cable MSOs have expanded their Ethernet portfolios into more markets where they have metro fiber. In addition, a newer generation of small service providers such as Masergy and Reliance (Yipes) have made inroads into large corporate accounts by providing sophisticated wide area networking services based on VPLS as a next-generation alternative to frame relay and ATM, using leased local access lines to reach customers. At the low-end of the market, the cable MSOs rollout of low-speed Ethernet over their extensive HFC networks will pose a significant threat to the incumbents installed base of T1/frame relay circuits.