Nortel has never been afraid of making a stir in the industry, and its Ethernet drive is no different.

In January, Nortel made international headlines for Ethernet when it announced it won a contract from BT to deploy its PBT (provider backbone transport), a technology that enables service providers to gain the cost efficiencies of Ethernet with the deterministic elements they have grown to love with traditional SONET. In addition, Nortel is pursuing emerging opportunities to expand the Ethernet over copper opportunity and it is developing WiMAX-based solutions. In an exclusive interview, Telecommunications Executive Editor Sean Buckley talked to John Hawkins, Senior Marketing Manager, Carrier Ethernet, Nortel about these trends and how the opportunity for Ethernet is shaping up in the global market.

Telecommunications: Recent research from Vertical Systems Group reports that revenue for business Ethernet services will reach US$30 billion by 2012, for example. While it may be hard to predict the exact amount of revenue, do you believe that Ethernet will have a continual impact?

Hawkins: All the indicators I see are a very healthy uptick. One tangent that might want to take is that I have not seen the Vertical analysis, but I am assuming they are talking about Ethernet by service providers to enterprises. One area we are tracking is Ethernet infrastructure. Certainly, everything we’re seeing is a very healthy uptake of Ethernet services because of the usual value proposition we have articulated before: it’s flexible, easy to manage and is very cost effective. We believe that’s driving a lot of business uptake for Ethernet.

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