The cost of transmitting mobile data will fall just as that of mobile voice did. But this trend – essential for cellcos to make a profit on their 4G networks – will rely heavily on intelligence throughout the network, rather than just on lower cost hardware.
This is the view of Cisco CEO John Chambers, many of whose recent acquisitions have been geared to enabling the new, smart mobile network.
“Price points are going to come down rapidly,” Chambers said during an interview at AllThingsD's D11 conference. “Transport will become free. Architectures will change. With intelligence throughout the network, the network will become the platform of the future.”
This is familiar Cisco thinking, of course, as it seeks to adapt its “network as the computer” approach in the enterprise for carriers by embracing technologies like self-optimizing networks (SON) and software defined networks (SDN).
Acquisitions like those of Intucell, BroadHop, Meraki and ThinkSmart are all feeding into the roadmap, and Cisco is also boosting its carrier Wi-Fi platform – Chambers predicted that Wi-Fi offload will be a permanent part of cellco strategy, not just a stopgap while LTE platforms rise to the data challenge, and he thinks WLans will eventually carry 80% to 90% of cellular data growth.
Cisco recently opened a new innovation center in Israel to test SON technologies in partnership with local carrier Pelephone Communications, which was an early customer of Intucell (whose flagship user is AT&T).
The center will put Cisco' Quantum SON portfolio through its paces, testing real world scenarios and business cases, and achieving proof points for how automation and optimization can reduce the cost of data delivery.