Standardised in two flavours in mid-2004, mid-band Ethernet is beginning to make serious waves in the copper-based short haul and local loop transmission markets. According to Mehmet Balos, president of Americas and chief marketing officer of Actelis Neworks, the IEEE 802.ah technology is presently being tested by incumbents ‘… in every country in the world.’ And it’s not just incumbents that are interested. Service providers which have bought, are about to buy, have tested or which are apparently contemplating purchasing the technology from the like of Actelis and rival Hatteras Networks apparently include AT&T, Bell South, BT , COLT, Easynet, PowerTel in Australia, T-Com in Hungary, and XO Communications in the USA.

Mid-band Ethernet runs over existing copper pairs, with the 2Base-TL symmetric service being based on the same physical layer as Enhanced SHDSL and the asymmetric/symmetric 10Pass-TS flavour based on VDSL. In principle 2Base-TL provides nominal symmetric data rates of 2.3Mbits/s over 2,700 to 3,600 metres and 5.7Mbits/s over shorter distances, with the standard defining a multi-pair bonding scheme that enables 8 pairs to deliver 45Mbits/s over short distance and up to 20Mbits/s over a typical carrier serving area. As Hatteras vice president of marketing Gary Bolton points out, the two pairs that deliver 2Mbits/s for an E1 connection in principle can now deliver 11.4Mbits/s. Meanwhile, for its part, the less well commercialised 10Pass-TS can offer asymmetric rates of around 100Mbits/s and 50Mbits/s symmetric.

Mid-band Ethernet is being marketed as a solution for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that have outgrown their E1/T1 facilities but don’t have the need for the very large capacities at which conventional Metro Ethernet services typically start, It’s also being positioned as a substitute for fibre – a strategy which makes some play of the fact that only 9% of European businesses and 11% of US businesses are presently connected by fibre.

Applications for mid-band Ethernet include the delivery of real Ethernet services to SMBs, and cellular, DSLAM, and fixed and meshed wireless network backhaul. According to Vertical Systems’ data cited by Hatteras, the potential SMB mid-band Ethernet market over the next five years is over US$8bn in the USA and over US$7bn in Europe.
John Williamson