This IDC study discusses PBT as a protocol and new technology, which has garnered huge amounts of press and analysis to date. How widely spread PBT will become, and who the likely natural adopters are of PBT will be under discussion.

"The ultimate goal for any provider is to offer as many profitable services as possible independent of the underlying technology. Consumers do not care about the type of technology their service runs on, merely that their service is reliable and of high quality. Ethernet will be adopted into carrier networks, most likely combined with other technologies along the way to effectively optimize the consumer experience." — Eve Griliches, program manager, IDC's Telecommunications Equipment