BANGALORE, INDIA: Back in 1973 when Bob Metcalfe invented the first Ethernet network at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, all he meant was a medium so that electromagnetic waves, or data packets, could propagate or exchanged among personal computers at Xerox.

The present-day Ethernet technology has come a long way from the days of being simply Ether (A term that was borrowed from physics, where a nineteenth century physicists believed that there was some medium between the sun and the earth, referred to as luminiferous ether, for the propagation of electromagnetic waves).

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However, how much has India been able to make a mark in this space and how vibrant is the Indian Ethernet or carrier Ethernet space? Not much, seems to be what industry bodies and experts have to say.

Although Metro Ethernet Foundation bets high on the huge business opportunity for carrier Ethernet in India, and Frost &Sullivan projects that the Indian Ethernet market will grow close to 40 per cent during the next five years, Indian Ethernet market is still a minuscule sand in the vast desert of carrier Ethernet market.

Let's hear what Anil Kumar Reddy, AGM, Business Development, RAD Data Communications India has to say about carrier Ethernet's scope in India. Excerpts:

CIOL: What is the kind of momentum that you see in the Indian market with regard to Ethernet?

Anil K. Reddy: Ethernet has a tremendous scope for growth in India owing to per megabit bandwidth availability.

It offers almost six times the bandwidth than a traditional network. This makes Ethernet more affordable for our market owing to its low cost per deployment, high scalability and quality of service and homologous nature.

With Ethernet, a business customer who has about 2 mbps of network capacity can scale up to 10 mbps, since bandwidth is already available in Ethernet pipes and all one has to do is provision the central site according to the need.

This process is otherwise very cumbersome in conventional networks. So I see a clear migration path wherein all vendors and service providers will go for Ethernet soon.

CIOL: What is driving this momentum? How aware is the Indian market with regard to carrier Ethernet?

Anil: Predominantly, customer experience is driving the demand for Ethernet. From an era when 256 mbps or 556 kbps bandwidth capacity were considered  luxury for residential users, these users have started experiencing high bandwidth applications, such as YouTube, online gaming, movies, video conferencing etc. They are open to spend more such applications.

Moreover, other factors such as online education, e-Hospital, e-business, e-commerce, and now UIDAI  have also started picking up in Indian market.

On the other hand, business customers, of late, have started considering Internet a very serious mode of business. Today business customers with 2 mbps of bandwidth will find more takers and users if they want to increase bandwidth because customers have realised that their bandwidth buying capacity is cheaper with Ethernet, along with better quality of service, reliability, performance, and resilience.

So this shift in customer perspective is forcing many to start deploying packet-based Ethernet network, also called carrier Ethernet network, or packet-based network.