France Telecom's Carrier Ethernet Boom

CEN Feature (Mar 17 2011)

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   -->-->-->-->-->Fiber is booming across Europe and France Telecom is riding a wave of requests for bandwidth provisioned over Ethernet. 

   "Since January 2011, one third of the requests for bandwidth are equal or better than 100 Mbps," said Olivier Zankel, head of International Ethernet Products for France Telecom/Orange. "We're also seeing an emerging demand for Gigabit Ethernet."

   Zankel's statements are backed by a pair of recent reports from Vertical Systems. In February, Vertical put Orange at the top of its 2010 Leaderboard for global providers of Ethernet services, outranking Colt, Verizon, NTT, AT&T and Global Crossing. The firm's business fiber penetration report for 2010 issued in March saw an increase of 18.4 percent in Europe based on the percentage of buildings with 20 or more employees.

   "We have a long story with Ethernet, with our first Internet product in 1995 in France. We launched an international Internet service in 2007 on our international footprint," Zankel said. "There was strong demand. We were quite surprised by the amount of bandwidth requested by customers."

   Over its Ethernet Global Network (EGN), Orange currently offers Gigabit connectivity and several classes of service tailored for applications such as video, voice and real time communications. The service is delivered over Orange's MPLS and customers can choose the profile they want. Zankel added that Orange positions Ethernet as a complementary product -- not a replacement for -- IP VPN services.

   "Today, we offer 1Gig connectivity," said Zankel. "For 2012, we will be able to [offer] 3 or 4 Gbps to some of our customers... Companies are coming to us requesting 10 GigE more as well. Last year, we saw that one or two times a semester; since January, it's been one request per month. We see an emerging amount of companies asking for 10 GigE, we don't see [them] asking for 40 or 100 Gbps." 

   While business fiber penetration has risen 18.4 percent in Europe last year, prospects south of France also look promising.

   "In Africa, we have a lot of history, we've invested a lot," Zankel said. "We're already serving some countries there, such as Morocco and South Africa. In Morocco, we've had customers start out with small bandwidth requests of 4 to 6 Mbps, but we've seen several times those customers go up to 40 to 50 Mbps. That's the case also in South Africa, where we're seeing requests for 20 Mbps up to 100 Mbps."

   In 2012, Orange will continue to expand and upgrade its EGN so it can be available in almost every POP on its network, with the intention to offer more services to data centers on the roadmap. It is also monitoring and testing the utility of Carrier Ethernet exchanges, such as CENX, but hasn't made a commitment yet to any particular exchange.

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