NTT (News - Alert) America, a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) and a Tier-1 global IP network services provider, has just released the major developments in the broadband solutions and IP transit industry in 2011 .
The company also predicted the trends that will continue to affect the industry throughout the coming year.
One of the trends, according to Michael Wheeler, vice president, NTT Communications (News - Alert) Global IP Network, NTT America, is the increased consolidation in the broadband solutions industry. This follows the flurry of merger and acquisitions (M&A) in the market, including Verizon's acquisition of Terremark, CenturyLink's acquisition of Qwest and Savvis, Level 3's acquisition of Global Crossing and, most recently, Windstream's (News - Alert) acquisition of PAETEC.
"The motivators for the majority of the M&A activity in 2011 can be traced back to two driving factors: scale and scope. The acquisitions by Qwest, Level 3 and Windstream were largely driven by scale -- expanding their services into new markets they didn't previously have a presence in or access to," Wheeler added. "Verizon, on the other hand, is an example of a scope play.
Terremark added services to the Verizon portfolio that it didn't have before, specifically in the cloud services space."
Another trend, as noted by NTT, is that growing popularity of Internet, especially for the use of video content, is driving the need for new technologies. New technologies are emerging to alleviate the pressure that this growth places on networks.
One such technology is 100GigE ports, which Wheeler predicts will see their first deployments in early 2012 and reach mass deployment in 2016 and 2017. Internet service providers (ISPs) will lead the way in the deployment of 100GigE, in order to better accommodate the transit of video content from a cost and service perspective.
The growth of Internet and Internet connected devices has also increased the sophistication of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, according to Wheeler. As more and more devices emerge that can be connected to the Internet, the risk of DDoS attacks becomes greater and greater. This increased sophistication of attacks drives the need for DDoS protection services.
NTT America sees great opportunity for broadband solutions in Latin America. However, the company says that Latin American service providers will struggle to grow and invest in their networks without a continually growing subscriber base.
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Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Stefanie Mosca