Ethernet vendors see mobile backhaul surge

As capacity pressures begin to mount on wireless data networks, operators claim to have launched system-wide upgrades of their backhaul networks from traditional T1s to new fiber and Ethernet technologies. The Ethernet switch vendors are starting to see the first evidence of those efforts this year with at least two of them reporting significant boosts in sales driven by mobile backhaul sales.

Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) saw a 70% increase in Ethernet switching revenues from the second quarter to the third. The majority of that increase was due to mobile backhaul deployments, said Taylor Salman, product solutions marketing director at Ciena.

“Even though we’re seeing a surge in Ethernet revenue for wireless networks, we’re just barely scratching the surface of the mobile backhaul market,” Salman said.

Ciena’s Ethernet backhaul business was bolstered by its contract with Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR), which is the first wireless operator to deploy high-capacity Ethernet to every one of its cell sites, primarily using point-to-point radio links. Each major market Clearwire launches in requires anywhere from 500 to 1500 towers, each fed by a 40 Mb/s backhaul connection and each sporting a Ciena Ethernet switch.

But Salman said AT&T has also begun to extend Ciena switches further into its metro Ethernet to meet needs of AT&T mobility, which is engaged in a system-wide upgrade of both radio and backhaul capacity. Ciena is also supplying gear to one of the largest North American cable operators and a wireline operator, both of which are selling backhaul services to wireless providers, Salman said.

Hatteras Networks, a supplier of Ethernet-over-copper and Ethernet-over-TDM technologies, has also seen an uptick in the backhaul business, as operators look for an alternative to fiber to supply higher capacities to cell sites. “Backhaul has clearly been a key component of our growth in 2009,” said Vijay Raman, VP of Product Line Management and Marketing. “We’ve added several new customers for backhaul this year.”

Hatteras isn’t just waiting for the market to come to the vendor. It’s tailoring its product line for the mobile backhaul market, hoping to tap into the burgeoning demand for Ethernet service to the base station in areas where a fiber connection is unfeasible. It’s Ethernet switches have been primarily used by operators as a way to offload data from the network, giving them as much as a 10 times boost in capacity over traditional TDM transport, but carriers using Hatteras gear have had to keep their voice traffic separate, running Ethernet and TDM in parallel. Last week, Hatteras unveiled a new switch, the HN6100 Multi-Service Ethernet Switching Platform, the first of its products to support its new internally developed Pseudo-Wire Plus technology. The switch supports Ethernet and TDM natively, allowing an operator to not only run both circuit-switched voice and data over the same backhaul connection, but automatically allocate capacity from one to the other depending on the traffic load of the base station.

Though not traditionally a wireless show, Supercomm’s core wireline vendors placed extra emphasis on their mobile backhaul products at this year’s show, signaling the growing importance of what was traditionally a neglected aspect of the network.

Transmode unveiled a new wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) fiber solution, providing “hybrid” support for both TDM and Ethernet traffic. Transmode said it is targeting the technology specifically at wireline and cable operators looking to get into the high-capacity backhaul business.

RAD Data Communications also announced a new carrier Ethernet demarcation device, which can double as a mobile backhaul gateway, allowing it to delineate and prioritize user and transport traffic between future long-term evolution base stations and the evolved packet core.