Andy Hollingworth, Opal's Director of Wholesale, analyses the emergence of Next Generation Ethernet in the wholesale market and the opportunity this offers partners of all shapes and sizes.

Ethernet in itself is not a new technology but it is important for the channel to recognise how its delivery has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and the impact this has had on carrier offerings. Evolving market conditions mean customers are looking for greater efficiency, savings and performance, but delivering Ethernet across traditional legacy networks creates a complex, inefficient and relatively expensive service, meaning it may no longer measure up.

Step forward Next Generation Ethernet... the future of networking: When you look at the propositions on offer for the end user, the business case for NGN operators to supply fibre-based Ethernet is strong. It can include a Service Level Agreement to fix technical issues in less than six hours, synchronous upstream and downstream bandwidth which can run at any rate from 10 Mb to 100Mb (and beyond), and re-grades to bandwidth that can follow an organisation's changing bandwidth requirements from SME to a large corporate. Coupled with a competitive cost structure made possible due to the high density of communication provider unbundled exchanges, the case for partners to switch to fibre-based Ethernet over NGN to gain competitive edge becomes compelling.

A key selling point of Next Generation Ethernet is in its scalability and flexibility. It has something to offer every partner, regardless of their size or expertise. For large, technically proficient partners, operators, such as Opal now have the ability to offer wholesale fibre-based Ethernet services, operated across their networks, offering a solution that is a high-revenue, mass market replacement for leased line and traditionally delivered Ethernet services. For those larger partners which have sufficient internal technical capability and prefer to manage their own IP networking, fibre-based Wholesale Ethernet will offer them a connectivity solution over which they can build their own VPNs to meet their end customer needs.

For other partners, the lower prices created by an operator's ability to provide a single fixed, distance independent, charge may prove to be the attraction in the current climate. For others, additional added-value benefits such as the enhanced fix times within the Ethernet SLA and higher bandwidths make Next Generation Ethernet an obvious choice for commercial sites that cannot tolerate long outages and have higher demands on bandwidth. Wholesale Ethernet over NGN is particularly well suited to head offices and larger offices with high internet demands or the need to communicate with multiple sites via a VPN. The technology is also ideal to support HD videoconferencing and the demands of centrally hosted databases requiring large, fast data transfers.

Next Generation Ethernet offers a scalable solution for the customers of mid tier and specialist partners, increasing available bandwidth seamlessly as their end customer's business needs change. As a wires-only service it offers resellers the maximum opportunity to add value and their customers the opportunity to take the widest range of network based value added applications. At the other end of the scale for the smaller partners low cost Next generation Ethernet will form a key part of VPN services to smaller businesses and will allow smaller operators to compete effectively with traditional players. For these partners it finally provides a solution to the perennial problem of managing multiple suppliers by allowing them to take all of their data services from a single supplier.

Crucially, Next Generation Wholesale Ethernet provides increased bandwidth and network connectivity at a time when market demand for higher bandwidths seems to be growing exponentially. Unified communications, continually growing data applications and conferencing applications, such as voice and video, are becoming more strategically important in reducing business overheads, so partners need to ensure their product sets are equipped to meet these demands.

Partners with existing leased lines, SDSL or traditionally delivered Ethernet products should be looking at their current business models and asking whether they can deliver much more for the same price, or whether there is opportunity to increase the margin available and gain that much needed competitive edge. With the next generation of Ethernet products, the answer is a resounding ‘yes'.