SCOTTSDALE, USA: Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is becoming more popular and that spending on the communication’s technology will reach $2.4 billion in 2015, finds market research firm In-Stat, in its latest study.

“MPLS is protocol agnostic and highly scalable,” says Greg Potter, analyst, In-Stat. “It was designed to provide a unified data-carrying service for both circuit-based clients and packet-switching clients. A number of different technologies were previously deployed with similar goals, like frame relay and ATM. Newly collected data tells us that the increase in MPLS spending has had a negative impact on some of these other technologies.” 

The study also finds that frame relay spending will decline 55 per cent from 2010 to 2015, whereas, spending on cable data services will increase 34 per cent over the forecast period.

While, small businesses (20-99 employees) will spend a little over $6.2 billion in 2012, healthcare and social services vertical will experience the largest overall gain, increasing $1.2 billion over the forecast period, it adds.

Wireline data services is a business spending category that includes expenditures on wide area network (WAN) data transport services.

These services include dedicated cable, DSL, network-based IP VPN, T1, frame relay, ATM, and Ethernet services. This also includes MPLS (multiprotocol label switching), which is a mechanism in high-performance telecommunications networks that directs and carries data from one network node to the next with the help of labels making it easy to create "virtual links" between distant nodes.