Global spending on metro Ethernet equipment nearly doubled last year to about $5 billion, according to new data from Infonetics Research, which projects the market to triple by 2009.

"Every year, Ethernet will account for a larger portion of metro [capital spending], led by phenomenal growth in carrier Ethernet switches and routers," said Infonetics principal analyst and co-founder Michael Howard.

Spending on carrier Ethernet switches and routers (CESRs), Ethernet passive optical networking (EPON) gear, Ethernet access devices (EADs) and Ethernet over copper and cable gear all grew at triple-digit rates in 2005. CESR vendors such as Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Redback Networks and Extreme Networks are among the would-be beneficiaries of that spending.

About a third of last year's metro Ethernet equipment spending came from North America, making it the largest geographic market, slightly ahead of Asia.

Howard expects shipments of metro Ethernet ports to "skyrocket" in the next few years, growing more than 30 fold between 2004 and 2009. Most of those will be VDSL copper ports, he said.

By 2009, the CESR market will more than double, becoming about a third of the overall metro Ethernet equipment market. The EAD market will grow 647%, Ethernet over copper and cable will grow 853%, and the resilient packet ring equipment market will grow 226%, Infonetics said. Overall spending on metro Ethernet gear will reach $15.5 billion.

This year access equipment vendor Adtran acquired the RPR technology of Luminous Networks, and Fujitsu Network Communications added RPR to its multiservice provisioning platform.

And carrier Ethernet gear proved to be hot last month when equipment giants Lucent Technologies and Ericsson fought over the assets of Riverstone Networks.