Business data services continue to represent an extremely competitive area of telecoms service provision, comprising 24% of the fixed telecoms market in Western Europe. Bandwidth requirements continue to increase, while budgets are static or declining. IP-MPLS VPNs have become standard for business data networks, usually with several classes of service, and using Ethernet access connections to provide flexible, high-bandwidth transport. Obtaining Ethernet access to connect sites that do not justify the cost of fibre is a problem for service providers, and is driving the roll-out of Ethernet over copper. As FR and ATM become obsolete, carriers are keen to switch off their networks, but demand is likely to continue for some time for specialist applications.
The 2500-word report accompanying the forecasts provides insight into customer expectations and marketplace trends, based on interviews with end users, user groups, vendors and service providers. The Excel forecasts give detailed estimates of spend by service type and access technology for seven countries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK, as well as high-level forecasts for Western Europe as a whole.
They also include high-level forecasts for Western Europe as a whole. Services are broken down into the following types:
- Internet access
- Layer 2 VPN
- Layer 3 (IP) VPN
- point-to-point circuits.
They are mapped onto five categories of access technology:
- ATM
- broadband
- Ethernet
- FR
- SDH, WDM and other.
Spend is further divided by size of site (large, corporate small and SME small) and by type of organisation.
Business data services in Europe: market drivers and forecasts 2008–2013 answers your key questions:
- Will demand for business data products persist in a slower-growing economy?
- What do customers really want from business data services?
- Which customers want Layer 2 Ethernet VPNs?
- How long will it be before FR and ATM networks can be switched off?
- How can customers be influenced to purchase by SLA, rather than by specific technology?
- What new features do customers want from WAN service offerings?