Comcast (News - Alert) Corporation, a global media and technology company, has become the first service provider in the world to achieve Carrier Ethernet 2.0 (CE 2.0) certification from the Metro Ethernet Forum (News - Alert) (MEF) for E-Line and E-LAN services.

The new CE 2.0 certification verifies a provider's classes of service, service manageability and interoperability for delivery across multiple networks.

“A milestone was reached this year when for the first time Carrier Ethernet services share of bandwidth exceeded the sum total of all legacy telecom services across the world, with Frost & Sullivan, Vertical Systems and Infonetics (News - Alert) predicting a near $48 billion services market by 2015,” said Nan Chen, president, MEF, in a statement. “We are therefore very pleased to see that Comcast has achieved the latest milestone in our industry - becoming the first CE 2.0 Service Provider.”

Officials with Comcast pointed out that after extensive compliance testing by Iometrix (News - Alert), the MEF authorized certification test lab, the MEF certified Comcast Business Class Ethernet Private Line and Comcast Business Class Ethernet Virtual Private Line as CE 2.0 E-Line services and Comcast Business Class Ethernet Network Service as a CE 2.0 E-LAN service.

“From major healthcare groups to regional banks and organizations connecting to data centers, a wide range of mid-market and enterprise customers are turning to Comcast’s Ethernet services based on our extensive network reach and service availability, true network diversity, and continued investment in advanced network technologies,” said Mike Tighe, executive director of data services at Comcast Business Services.

Comcast Business Services, a unit of Comcast Cable, provides advanced communication solutions to help organizations of all sizes meet their business objectives.