This blog shares some terrific news from my colleagues in Japan. Cisco took six awards at Interop Tokyo 2013 last week, including the top prize for Service Provider/Carrier segment with our new CRS-X core router which launched last week.

• CRS-X Grand Prix in SP/Carrier segment
• Nexus 6000 Grand Prix in DC segment
• Cisco CGR Grand Prix in IoT/M2M segment
• Cisco CMX Grand Prix in ShowNet Demo segment
• Cisco Nexus 1000V InterCloud Special Award in Cloud Platform segment
• Cat3850 Special Award in Enterprise networking

The breadth of these wins – across Read More »

Tags: Cisco, core, CRS-X, data center, Service Provider, Softbank, Tokyo Interop

Wi-Fi networks seem to now be everywhere.  Once primarily confined to the home or office, we now expect Wi-Fi access in coffee shops, hotels, airports, stores and even in sport stadiums.  Not only are these Wi-Fi networks providing valuable Internet access to appreciative mobile users, they are collecting massive amounts of useful information.  Innovative businesses and operators are now learning how to unlock this valuable information to turn Wi-Fi networks into key enablers of business value.  We have identified eight technical characteristics of Wi-Fi networks that can help to deliver real value to the bottom-line:

 1.     Recognizes All Wi-Fi Enabled Devices

Recent research by Cisco IBSG shows that consumers have an average of 2.6 mobile devices, most of which are now Wi-Fi enabled.  These devices are constantly signaling of their existence to Wi-Fi networks.  As a result, Wi-Fi access points are constantly collecting information on these devices and the movements of their owners without users having to authenticate on the network.  This means that venues are collecting information on a large number of people at an – effectively anyone who enters with a Wi-Fi activated mobile device in his pocket.  However, this does not raise personal privacy issues because only the MAC address of the device is collected and the information is aggregated across all users.

2.     Hyper-Sensitive Location Read More »

Tags: Big Data, Cisco, data analytics, IBSG, mobile, mobile data, mobile devices, mobile networks, monetization, Service Provider, wi-fi

Last week we notified the five winners of our inaugural VNI Service Awards competition.  When we launched this program on March 26, 2013 our goal was to inspire others about the human aspect of what it means to be connected. We wanted to learn how various communication technologies were being used. How does having access to the Internet and mobile services impact the daily lives of people and their community? This is how we want to measure the value of being connected, and having access to reliable communication channels.

The final scores were based on a combination of the judge’s scores, and a ranking assigned to the number of comments per story. It was difficult selecting the top five stories as there were many tied scores. We had to go to two decimal points to get the final list. The point spread between the five winners was only 0.75 out of a max of 5.00 points. Read More »

Tags: economic impact, mobility solutions, research, sms, social responsibility, vni, VNI Service Adoption, VNI-SA

The Small Cell Industry has gathered in London again – last week for the Small Cells World Summit, and this week for the Wireless Broadband Alliance Wi-Fi Global Congress.  The explosive growth of these two events over the past few years is a testament to the vital role that both licensed and unlicensed small cells are playing in Next Generation Mobile networks.

Cisco has been deploying carrier-grade Wi-Fi networks for many years, and we are in fact in our 4th generation of outdoor product.  We define carrier-grade as a controlled Wi-Fi network that is secure, robust, and scalable.  But increasingly we’ve heard a new requirement from our customers: make it invisible. Read More »

Tags: aironet 1530, BT, Service Provider, small cell, wi-fi, wifi

By Joe Chow, VP/GM, Cisco Connected Devices BU

Part of the tech-buzz at this week’s Cable Show, in Washington, will be about customer premises equipment – set-tops, cable modems, gateways.

Of the CPE buzz, half of it will be about “RDK,” and the other half about how to divvy up what functions live in the house (via the CPE), vs. in the cloud.

That’s our prediction, anyway.

Let’s start with RDK buzz. It stands for Reference Design Kit, and is an industry effort to a) build new cable-specific hardware faster, and b) get new services and apps to the market faster, on that hardware. It was spearheaded last year by Comcast, and is expected to widen to other service providers.

At the Cable Show, we’ll be showcasing Read More »

Tags: cable, CPE, ncta 2013, Service Provider, videoscape, videoscape unity