MEF eyes 39 percent growth in Asia by 2012

New Delhi, Mar 23: With an urban population of 285 millon and a broadband penetration of less than one per cent, the country is one of the major markets, Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) president Nan Chen said here. India is one of the top six internet user nations in the world and still showing high double digit growth.

The MEF, which develops technical specifications and implementation agreements to promote interoperability and deployment of carrier ethernet worldwide, expects to earn revenue of 31 billion dollars by 2012. ''Robust enterprise customer demand is projected for the next five years, with double- digit annual growth across all geographic regional markets we expect to earn a revenue of 31 billion dollars by 2012,'' said the president.

The MEF is a global industry alliance comprising 142 organisations including telecommunications service providers, network equipment, software manufacturers semiconductors vendors and testing organisation is eyeing 39 per cent growth in its Asian market in the next five years. The top market sectors for the forum includes finance, education, healthcare, government and media which provides basic carrier ethernet services like E-LINE, E-LAN and E-TREE in future.

One of the key advantages for using carrier ethernet is that it economically meets exploding bandwith requirements currently constrained by the prohibitive cost of legacy networks apart from being easier for sevice providers to maintain and manage it, added Mr Chen.

''Wireless backhaul is another burgeoning application this year and it has hardly been addressed in India. The challenge for countries exploding mobile business is to meet the pressure from increasing usage by offering a cost effective migration path from legacy backhaul networks to an all-IP carrier ethernet solution,'' he said.

As carrier ethernet's scalability allows decoupling of traffic volume from capital and operating expenses, so operaters can handle massive growth in video and data traffic at far less cost, which is on of its added advantages, Mr Chen pointed out.

UNI