Comcast first SP with Carrier Ethernet 2.0

Comcast, a global media and technology company, has become the first service provider (SP) in the world to achieve CE 2.0 status.

‚”A milestone was reached this year when for the first time Carrier Ethernet services share of bandwidth exceeded the sum total of all legacy telecoms services across the world, with Frost & Sullivan, Vertical Systems and Infonetics predicting a near $48 billion services market by 2015. We are therefore very pleased to see that Comcast has achieved the latest milestone in our industry – becoming the first CE 2.0 service provider,‚” said Nan Chen, President, MEF.

The news follows the MEF’s recent announcement of the first twenty vendors to offer Carrier Ethernet 2.0 certified products in San Diego on January 29th. According to the MEF, this will mean a surge in the number of access providers in the Carrier Ethernet industry, new markets for regional providers, application-oriented SLAs, optimized mobile backhaul and cloud service delivery.

Ihab Tarazi, Chairman of the MEF added: ‚”Certification will enable service providers to choose equipment vendors with greater speed, clarity and certainty. CE 2.0 Certification marks a significant moment in the life of the MEF and Carrier Ethernet.‚”

The first twenty CE 2.0 vendors are: Accedian, Altera, BTI Systems, Ciena, Cisco, Cyan, FibroLAN, Huawei, Infinera, Juniper Networks, MRV, Omnitron, Overture, PT Inovacao, Pulsecom, RAD Data Communications, Telco Systems, Tellabs, Transition Networks and Transmode.

‚”It is a natural outcome that the service provider community will seek out equipment vendors with CE 2.0 certification,‚” says Kevin Vachon, COO of the MEF. ‚”Now we expect to see the enterprises specifying CE 2.0 services from their service provider partners.‚”

Latest generation CE 2.0 extends the original purpose of Carrier Ethernet with vital added features, including multiple classes of service, greater manageability and easier interconnect for eight standard service types, enabling new levels of efficiency for mobile backhaul, making it easier for a large number of access providers to join the Carrier Ethernet community and establish Carrier Ethernet as a business class cloud service carrier. According to Vachon: ‚”The main market drivers continue to dominate business: bandwidth growth, mobile data and LTE migration and the growth of public and private cloud computing.‚”

Bob Metcalfe, Inventor of the Ethernet, summed up saying: ‚”40 years after its inception, Ethernet continues to innovate. CE 2.0 gives service providers and vendors the ability to drive global interconnection and deliver a whole host of services to enterprises rapidly and with multiple classes of service and robust service level agreements. Carrier Ethernet continues to dominate and surpass all other WAN technologies and services on the market.‚”

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