VSNL to roll out ethernet services
Daily News & Analysis — February 7, 2007

Tata-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) will launch its ethernet services on Wednesday, just four months after launching the service globally. Ethernet is described as a large, diverse family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks. It is a part of a suite of managed network services from VSNL, spread over a large geographical area. The new service will connect 120 major cities to key business hubs across North America, Europe and Asia, VSNL said.

It would be offered through group concern TATA Indicom Enterprise Business Unit (TIEBU). Arvind Mathur, vice-president, global product management, TIEBU, says flexibility is the key factor for WAN ethernet services to grow at 30-50 per cent annually. This growth compares favourably with the flat or even declining growth of other technologies like ATM, he said, claiming that ethernet private line service gives customers a large selection of scalable bandwidths to choose from without any hardware modification.

Ethernet was introduced by Bob Metcalfe in the Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto laboratory in 1973. Today, it is used for roughly 85 per cent of the world's LAN connected PCs and workstations.