BT (News - Alert), a leading provider of communications solutions and services, has expanded carrier Ethernet service in the U.S. and Canada to meet the growing customer demand nodes in the metro areas of Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Newark, N.J. and Toronto, Canada.

As part of this development, the company has expanded BT Ethernet Connect, its global Ethernet virtual private network (VPN) service. It enables large organizations to evolve and grow their infrastructure while maintaining control of their IP architecture. BT Ethernet Connect is available in 28 countries with additional countries covered by long lines.

U.S Ethernet services market is projected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2009 to $7.2 billion in 2014, according to a recent research from IDC (News - Alert). To rake in from this opportunity, BT has added nodes in the U.S and Canada to BT Ethernet Connect, company officials said.

Kim McMann, president, BT U.S. and Canada, said, “With our ability to provide IP VPN services in more than 170 countries/ territories and Ethernet VPN services in 28 countries, multinational customers with operations in the U.S. and Canada rely on us to keep them connected and to provide value-added services that let them focus on their core business, not their networked IT infrastructure."

The expanded Ethernet network allows customers to set up their network to meet current needs and then add features when needed. The service is ideal for a wide range of applications including connecting data centers and organizations that wish to design and manage their IP layer.

BT also offers three access resilience options: Standard, Diverse and Diverse+. The “Standard” option offers a single physical connection from the BT point of presence (POP) to the customer site, whereas the “Diverse” option offers two accesses that are delivered to the same BT POP. “Diverse+” provides two accesses that are delivered to different POPs.

BT Ethernet Connect has been certified by the Metro Ethernet Forum to its standards MEF (News - Alert) 9 and 14, which validate the conformance and performance of Ethernet services offered by the company.

A recent TMCnet article explains the advantages of metro Ethernet, citing the observations from industry observer John Saxon. According to Saxon, “the advantages to metro Ethernet are that it can be wired, helping business to connect in a dedicated way. The limitations are very few as to speed and capacity, he notes, “so there would be plenty of availability and versatility, with virtually no waste.”