The in-country nodes for connecting the carrier’s domestic NGE network with its international backbone will be in Mumbai and Chennai. Tata Communications’ Ethernet services are provided throughout the country together with services connecting India to business centres throughout the world. This is also the first time that a carrier will use Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) technology.
Tata Communications feels that much of India’s Ethernet growth will come as a result of the adoption of more sophisticated and efficient multi-point networks. This necessitated the upgrading of the company’s extensive Ethernet network in the country and led to the deployment of the Cisco ASR 9000 platform that enables PBB.
The advantages of a PBB system are greater numbers of customers and higher bandwidth on the backbone, better isolation of customers from Denial of Service attacks, ensuring even greater security and reliability, and improved performance monitoring with latency and packet loss as standard items in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This network service will thus be useful for both service providers and enterprises.
With the Indian enterprise data market poised to grow significantly in the next five years, fuelled by bandwidth intensive applications, the market is seeking better and more extensive Ethernet services. While Tata Communications already offers multi-point service to its customers globally, the only way to increase multi-point capability and add more innovative Ethernet services and performance guarantees in the future is to move to the new industry standard of Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB), effectively addressing critical limitations of the existing technology,” said John Hoffman, head of Ethernet Product Management, Tata Communications.
Ethernet is one of fastest growing segments for the data services market and for FY 10-11 the contribution of Ethernet services accounts for three per cent and stands at INR 202 crore, however, the segment is poised to grow to INR 800 crore by FY 16. Ethernet, which has been witnessing traction from verticals like IT/ITeS, BFSI and Media that run bandwidth intensive applications, will grow at a CAGR of 32 percent for the next five years,” said Ravi Pandey, industry analyst, ICT Practice, South Asia & Middle East Region, Frost & Sullivan.
The primary growth drivers for the Ethernet market in India are IP migration, evolution of borderless enterprises, compliances/regulations, business continuity and disaster recovery centres as well as the convergence of business, residential and wireless networks.
The next generation Ethernet core allows Tata Communications to continue to provide its Ethernet customers with the ability to select specific routes through its network. As a further evolution of Tata Communications’ Ethernet network, the company will also be launching an enhanced multipoint service, burstability with usage-based billing together with a dedicated Ethernet service that can scale from 1,000 – 10,000 Meg in 500 Meg increments. The company is also now able to ensure higher network quality as a result of being able to monitor each and every customer and class of service, independently.
Tata Communications’ core capital expenditure in FY11 was pegged at $250 million, to which MPLS and Ethernet, contributed a significant amount. The company intends to increase capex investment to domains that include Ethernet, apart from cloud and managed services to over $400-450 million in FY12.
Tata Communications’ Global Ethernet Services spans more than 50 locations in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, as well as more than 120 cities across India and through partnerships four cities in China. Further expansion is planned in the coming months to include additional locations in Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
By Beryl M
editor@telecomlead.com