U.S. Ethernet Service Revenues $9.2 Billion by 2016

Adoption rates for U.S. retail Ethernet services will grow from $5.2 billion in 2012 to $9.2 billion in 2016, according to IDC.  

High bandwidth applications such as data center connectivity, disaster recovery/business continuity, and data storage replication are the three primary applications driving adoption of Ethernet, IDC says.

Increasing enterprise use of 100 Mbps, gigabit or 10 gigabit services makes Ethernet a virtual necessity.

In a broad sense, even consumer Internet connections now use Ethernet, as Cisco data suggests, so the growth is not surprising.