Starent
Having completed its $2.9 billion acquisition of Starent to hasten EPC entry, Cisco has now rebranded the centerpiece ST-40 as the “ASR 5000”, a “purpose-built mobile network multimedia core customer management solution” for 3G and 4G mobile networks.
Cisco claims its mobile portfolio also includes the ASR 1000, ASR 9000, 7600, MWR, CRS-1, Unified Computing System and Nexus series. The ASR 5000 supports much of the EPC functionality proposed by the 3GPP, as outlined in the Ovum report Evolution of IP subscriber management in mobile networks — keeping churn at bay. The Starent team has become the mobile internet technology group within Cisco, which generally does a good job of integrating acquisitions.
Cisco released its latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) five-year mobile forecast as a further justification for its deeper foray into mobile infrastructure. Its findings were that global mobile data traffic increased 160% in the past year to 90 petabytes per month, and that this figure will increase 39-fold over the next five years, reaching 3.6 exabytes per month in 2014.
Cisco also notes that global mobile data traffic is growing 2.4 times faster than global fixed broadband data traffic. While femtocells are expected to offload around 25% of traffic, new mobile business models and policy enforcement tools will still be needed to accommodate projected mobile traffic levels.