Ethernet, already a staple in metropolitan America, is rapidly making its way to its rural neighbors. According to an Insight’s panel of rural service providers and vendors, the Ethernet market for business in rural America is growing, and most companies are indifferent as to if it’s over copper or fiber – just as long as its fast.

The desire for services that are faster than legacy T-1s isn’t unique to metro markets. Kevin Sheehan, CEO of Hatteras Networks, said that while years ago fiber was nirvana in terms of network infrastructure, it is still today hard to get that fiber to a lot of his customers. Now, most are still using a copper-based infrastructure, putting Ethernet over copper – what he called more of a black art than a science. His company is focused on taking the mystery out of it by seamlessly extending Ethernet services using the latest technology.

“There are new tools embedded in product that make it a lot easier to qualify the loop before you turn up the services,” Sheehan said. “Equipment can tell you how far out the loop is before they even visit the premises, and new tools take out the historic pain of copper services.”

These historic pains of copper come as little surprise, according to Glenn Moore, director of marketing and sales operations at Cavalier Telephone. In many cases, especially in rural markets, it is not economically viable to deploy fiber, even it is great technology-wise, he said. Instead, it is much more favorable to do it on bonded two-pair loops to reach all the people in a provider’s footprint.

That being said, Cavalier doesn’t have many customers asking for Ethernet over fiber yet. It all comes down to what they can afford, Moore said. “It turns into a cost per-meg discussion. More bandwidth makes business work better, so weave it into how much better business will work and if you can cut your cost per meg as you go,” he said.

“In a small business, it needs to be simple,” Moore added. “They don’t care about the last mile. They just want to know its reliable, priced right, you can put it in quickly and its not going to break, or if it does you can fix it.”

Windstream has found a similar sentiment amongst its customer base. The rural telco works with a lot of customers, like local school districts, over a TDM-based network. They know they want an Ethernet interface, but their concern over their network ends here, according to Frank Schueneman, senior vice president of network services. He said that they want to connect all their networks together, and they are less hung up on whether it’s a copper network or not. Some want fiber, because they know it’s inherently a good technology, but when they get the construction bill – its all a practicality. “They want a 10-megabit Ethernet connection, and they don’t care how,” he said.