Cisco Strength on the Inside

I had the privilege of speaking with two Cisco executives in the last few weeks about the company’s small cell strategy.  I found Cisco’s vision compelling and true to its strengths. The first conversation I had was with Jared Headley, Cisco’s senior director of Small Cell Solutions, about the company’s acquisition of Ubiquisys Networks.

The statement about the acquisition says it well:

Ubiquisys' indoor small-cell expertise and focus on intelligent software for licensed 3G and LTE spectrum, coupled with Cisco's mobility portfolio and Wi-Fi expertise, will enable a comprehensive small-cell solution for service providers that supports the transition to next-generation radio access networks. Together, Ubiquisys and Cisco will offer a differentiated connected experience to the end-user by providing service providers with a comprehensive solution that extends an intelligence layer across the mobile network.

In discussing the synergies, Jared and I considered the pain points that carriers are facing right now -- namely the density of locations and buildings such as stadiums, terminals and other large facilities in crowded municipalities. Managing the obstacles of backhaul, footprint and power are what Cisco sees as a problem they can help solve.

Jared pointed out that Ubiquisys supports a dozen carriers today and soon will quadruple its carrier deployments.   

While Verizon Wireless is set to complete its LTE network in 2014, the issues of small cells are tactical. Small cell deployments are not about overall coverage, it’s about covering areas where the density problem presents itself, particularly in this next phase.

My conversation with Cisco’s Mark Grayson expanded this discussion. Mark is Cisco’s distinguished consulting engineer, and leads Cisco's mobile architecture strategy at the macro level. Much of the discussion reminded me of conversations of the late nineties when Cisco’s dominance in the enterprise data network space was making the company a strategic partner for all the carriers’ IP migrations.

Cisco’s small cell strategy focuses again on its strength in the enterprise space and its expanded solutions in service provider Wi-Fi (SP Wi-Fi) and analytics.

Mark pointed out that today’s W-iFi network represents a guideline for small cell deployments. The analytics of the Wi-Fi network as it supports offload is a great place to see the capacity requirements. This includes the use of social network and geo tagging to plot the needs. Cisco also sees the opportunity to harmonize its SP Wi-Fi solutions with its 4G LTE support capitalizing on its strength.

Of course, many of the RF engineers out there are making the same kind of “circuit” -like statements about the lack of QoS and the problems of off-load. 

However, I think it’s safe to say that problems have been overcome before, and the future is bright for Cisco showing the strength of its experience for the evolved packet core.