Cisco Systems will make a three-pronged attack at Mobile World Congress in Madrid this week on what it sees as an impending flood of mobile data, especially video, by extending its current product lines with tools for better content delivery.
The big splash includes Cisco’s first IEEE 802.11n access points for outdoor service provider networks, extensions to its recently announced Videoscape architecture and mechanisms for its access switches to optimize networks for certain types of mobile traffic.
In a recently published forecast, Cisco estimated that mobile video traffic would more than double every year from 2010 until 2015, when it would make up two-thirds of all mobile data. Cisco doesn’t make cellular radio networks, but it provides wired systems and the network management that sits behind the cellular infrastructure, as well as the Wi-Fi networks that some carriers use to offload data from the main wireless network.
The Cisco Aironet 1550 Series Outdoor Wireless Access Points are designed specifically for mobile carriers, municipalities and cable operators to provide wireless coverage in public areas. They will incorporate the company’s Next Generation Hotspot technology, which is designed to let mobile operators automatically log subscribers on to hotspots and set up encrypted connections. The 1550 family will also include Clean Air, a recently announced Cisco technology that lets access points detect interference and move to different channels in response, according to Chris Kozup, director of borderless networks at Cisco.
To tackle the growing volume of video on all types of mobile carrier networks, the company is announcing Cisco Mobile Videoscape, a component of the overall Videoscape platform announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show last month.
“Mobile Videoscape consists of new technology for the Cisco ASR 5000 switch and the UCS (unified computing system) server platform to help deliver video content smoothly regardless of device or network strength,” said Andy Capener, director of marketing for service provider mobility. “Among other things, Mobile Videoscape can transcode video to different formats and resolutions for viewing on different-sized screens and slower or faster networks, he said.
Cisco is also introducing software for its ASR 1000, 5000 and 9000 access switches, which reside on the wired end of a mobile operator’s network, to route data traffic more intelligently and efficiently. The AIR (adaptive intelligent routing) technology uses detailed information about subscribers, locations and applications from EPC (enhanced packet core) infrastructure to make those decisions.
Though some subscribers might balk at the notion of a carrier reducing a video from high to standard definition so it can stream smoothly over a congested network to a handset, users relying on the same mast could appreciate not having their quality-of-service impacted upon.
US consumers are likely to start benefiting from the new technologies in carriers’ hands within a year.
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