According to a research study conducted by the Insight Research Corporation, between businesses and consumers more than $ 37 billion over the next 5 years is expected to be budgeted towards Carrier Ethernet providers. Taking into account most all major data carriers already offer Ethernet services, the market is expected to grow at a compounded rate of nearly 25 percent year over year. This would result in an increase from roughly 3.1 billion dollars in 2010 to about 9.7 billion dollars in 2015.

According to this Ethernet study, U.S. demand for Ethernet service hasn’t dropped…even during the recent economic downturn. The report also foresees increased demand that will peak in 2011, where rates of revenue growth should reach approximately 29 percent on a compound annual basis. These Ethernet services are marketed under any number of names, including Ethernet access, native LAN, transparent LAN, Ethernet private line, Ethernet virtual private line, Gigabit Ethernet, GigE, virtual private LAN, Layer 2 virtual private network, and metro Ethernet.

“The momentum behind sales retail business Ethernet services is being driven by a growing customer demand for bandwidth and the real advantages of Ethernet cost in terms of providing flexible bandwidth and scalability that is superior to many competitive services, “says Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research. “The driving force behind sales Wholesale Ethernet improves interoperability between operators greater confidence in emerging economies and newly adopted standards, and changes in more than carriers of a more favorable stance Wholesale “concluded Rosenberg.

Qualcomm [NASDAQ: QCOM] has agreed to sell it’s FLO TV mobile broadcast solution to AT&T [NYSE: T] for $1.92 billion. The spectrum underlying FLO TV is in the lower 700 MHz frequency band, and spans more than 300 million customers across the United States. AT&T stated they intend to deploy the spectrum as a supplemental down-link in conjunction with their 4G mobile broadband network rollout, to leverage the resulting capacity gains to fulfill rich media content demand. The companies plan for the transaction to close in the 2nd half 2011.

It was reported that Qualcomm spent $683 million to acquire the FLO TV spectrum, which covers over 70 million people in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco (12 MHz of D and E block spectrum) along with more than 230 million people across the rest of the country (6 MHz of D block spectrum). Qualcomm claims they have invested a total of about $800 million between spectrum, network development and marketing to launch the FLO TV network with fewer than 1 million customers sign-ups. Qualcomm is anticipating additional costs between $125 and $175 million in fiscal 2011 from their exit from the FLO TV business.

FLO TV features both live and time-shifted broadcast content from providers including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, ESPN, CNN and MTV. FLO TV was only available to limited markets initially, but went nationwide in mid-2009 in conjunction with the fundamental transition from analog to digital. Qualcomm will terminate FLO TV services on March 27.

Google announced on Dec 15, 2010 that they will have delayed their decision on choosing which communities will be allowed to test its 1 Gbps broadband network product until early 2011. They stated the reason for this delay was they simply received too many applications.

Earlier in 2010 Google announced a plan to begin construction of a fiber-based network supporting Internet data transfer at speeds over 1 gigabit/sec. This is more than 100x the speed of most current residential broadband connections, which paves the way for a much more robust level of application delivery, especially in the gaming and video sectors.

Google plans to test the initial offering of this network for between 50,000 and 500,000 homes in the U.S. Google accepted bids from municipalities looking to test the offering, which triggered a frenzied response. Even government officials jumped into the action in an effort to garner Google’s attention. The bidding process was closed March 2010, but not before almost 200,000 individuals and over 1,100 municipalities applied.

Google stated the initial plan was to announce the winning applicant by the end of 2010, but with only a couple weeks left in the year, Google has not yet made their choice. “While we’re moving ahead full steam on this project, we’re not quite ready to make that announcement,” said Milo Medin, Google’s new VP of Internet Access Services. Medin went on to say, “We’re sorry for this delay, but we want to make sure we get this right.”

Currently, Google expects to make their selection early in 2011.

The update came about 2 months after Google and Stanford University agreed to a deal offering a broadband network supporting speeds of up to 1Gbps for approximately 850 homes occupied by faculty and staff. This project is slated to begin early in 2011.