The Infonetics Research report, "Service Provider Plans for Metro Optical and Ethernet", (Fibers.org, Jan 29, 2004) says that nearly two-thirds of the service providers profiled plan to roll out quality-of-service (QoS)-based services over Ethernet by next January, including packetized voice, bandwidth on demand, and private lines. Even so, network systems vendors must still address the problem of providing QoS for Ethernet services, the highest-rated technical challenge to emerge from the study. This is a particularly nasty problem, since providers use different technologies to reach their various target customers: wholesale (provider to provider), large business, medium business, small business, SOHO, and residential.

A DQSA-based Metro Ethernet system overcomes this "nasty problem" by providing a QoS that will satisfy the requirements of all the customers listed above.

Substantial growth is predicted for this market. Infonetics Research says that worldwide metro Ethernet equipment ports hit 1.1 million in 2003, up from 906,000 in 2002, and will grow over 400% to 5.8 million by 2007, a CAGR of 52%.