Although well known for oil and cattle, Texas is home to many high technology companies (including the Cisco campus of yours truly), and is the largest clean energy (wind) producer in the USA. It’s also got a booming economy that needs advanced telecommunications services to all parts of the state.
To that point, we recently talked with the team at Texas Lone Star Network (TLSN). Located just 50 miles northwest of the capital of Austin, TLSN operates a Cisco DWDM fiber network spanning over 3000 route miles offering wavelength, Ethernet, and SONET services to its 39 consortium company members, national carriers, wireless carriers, regional cable TV operators, colleges and the federal government. Earlier in the year they made the decision to upgrade their network with a deployment of Cisco’s ASR 9000 Series routers.
TLSN has connected the new ASR 9000 routers with 10G optical wavelengths enabled in the Cisco DWDM backbone network. The enhanced network provides them the foundation for new, revenue generating services, including cloud computing, cell backhaul, and IP/MPLS virtual private networks. In particular, cell backhaul is expected to be a growth area because of the number of 4G deployments going on in Texas right now.
“With the rapid growth in customer demand for higher capacity , driven especially by video, mobile, and high speed data services, we had to scale our network, but we had to also watch our operational expenses. Leveraging our new Carrier Ethernet platform we’re able to offer new services cost effectively to our member companies and customers to ensure that technologies such as telemedicine and distance learning are available to any community in the state. Plus, with our Texas-wide footprint we can offer both a wide range of highly available services coupled with a unique footprint that other providers can’t match.” Brad Seymour, General Manager, TLSN
This past week, I attended the grand opening celebration of Verizon Wireless’ Innovation Center in Waltham, MA. The center, which brings together companies and entrepreneurs alike, is designed to provide a collaborative, hands-on workspace to rapidly develop innovative products and services that leverage 4G LTE technology.
The grand opening was an exciting event and the center was filled with innovative demos and technology tours featuring all types of LTE connected innovations -- from the connected home, connected car, gaming, digital juke box, video and even future innovations such as a connected bike and an LTE-connected robot.
Cisco is a Premier Participant and we have been involved since day one. We are pleased to have provided many man-hours of expert resources to deploy Cisco Mobile Internet solutions to help Verizon Wireless establish this unique center of excellence for all things LTE.
At the center, we have many demonstrations and technologies on display including Cisco Mobile Videoscape, the Cisco Cius enterprise tablet supporting 3G and 4G LTE, Cisco TelePresense, LTE-Connected Enterprise Branch, LTE-enabled Digital Media Signage and Cisco RAN Backhaul and LTE Evolved Packet Core solutions. We’re pleased to also provide the Evolved Packet Core for the 4G LTE Innovation Center lab network - identical to the commercial network - for use by the ecosystem of technology developers accessing the center’s technical and business development resources.
Howard’s recent post on the potential for broadband to reshape rural areas raised some interesting issues, and generated a lot of discussion. For me though, the biggest question it raised was how service providers will actually make it work. How can they deliver broadband services to vast, sparsely populated regions in a way that makes sense economically?
Of course, the industry is already answering this question. One promising possibility: fixed wireless broadband.
2011 is shaping up to be the year of the tablet. As seen by overwhelming consumer demand, the trend that started in 2010 continues to rapidly gain momentum. More and more people see value in the advanced video and collaboration capabilities combined with the mobility that tablets offer.
Within the enterprise, mobile tablets are positioned to be a critical part of a company’s suite of collaboration and communications tools. Organizations can leverage the unified communications and collaboration capabilities of the tablet to enhance productivity for an increasingly mobile workforce. Cisco saw the power of this tool and responded with the release of the first mobile tablet made specifically for businesses, the Cisco Cius™.
Today, May 11, AT&T announced plans to offer the Cisco Cius to its business customers, and Cisco expects the Cius to be available for AT&T’s HSPA+ network in the fall of 2011. The purpose-built Cius delivers virtual desktop integration with anywhere, anytime access to the full range of Cisco collaboration and communication applications, including full interoperability with Cisco TelePresence®. The Cius will move easily between wired connectivity to Wi-Fi and mobile broadband networks, including AT&T’s HSPA+ network.
Contributed by Ash Dahod, Cisco SVP/GM of the Mobile Internet Technology Group
Mobile communications are expanding rapidly, and this is changing the way we all work, live and entertain. We are now truly able to stay connected virtually anywhere, anytime. The market and its associated technological advancements are moving very quickly and this was even more apparent as I met with customers, partners and colleagues at 4G World in Chicago.
We are all aware of the Mobile Internet tidal wave that is upon us and a lot of the talk at the show was how we can prepare for this next wave of technical advancements. Additionally, what was on most of our minds was how we can do this profitably.
I had the opportunity to speak at the conference and shared some thoughts on how the right network with the right combination of performance and intelligence will drive mobile operator profitability.
In the simplest form, we have to change the way we are looking at the market from a technical and business point of view.
We need to look at profitability and the ways we will address revenue and expense. Intelligence will be central to our new business models, new revenue streams and the efficiency of the network. From this perspective, we see that we need to increase the investment in network intelligence.
By Jason Kohn, Contributing Columnist
2011 is shaping up to be the year of the tablet. As seen by overwhelming consumer demand, the trend that started in 2010 continues to rapidly gain momentum. More and more people see value in the advanced video and collaboration capabilities combined with the mobility that tablets offer.