By Ross Fujii, CTO of Cisco Network Management Technology Group (NMTG)
Bring Own Your Device (BYOD) in the context of the business world reflects the fact that many consumers bring their work home with them. Specifically, they connect devices they have received as part of their job – laptops, smartphones, and tablets – to the home network and use them as they would at the workplace.
While the added productivity of BYOD and working at home is attractive to businesses, the risk of exposure is not. Laptops, for example, can store or access sensitive data like financial information or critical trade secrets that need to be protected. In some cases, such as personal or health data, the law requires that this information must be secured.
The reality is that it is not always possible to ensure that a device is secure. As a consequence, Read More »
By Ross Fujii, CTO of Cisco Network Management Technology Group (NMTG)
Before exploring how service providers can capitalize upon the opportunities that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) offers, it is critical to understand what consumers actually need and want from their home network. A few usage scenarios will illustrate the key characteristics of the next-generation connected home:
You’re watching the news on your smartphone as you take a walk around the neighborhood. When you get home, you pause the video stream and resume it on your IPTV in the comfort of your living room couch.
You’ve heard about a new TV show you want to check out. You have no idea whether Read More »
By Ross Fujii, CTO of Cisco Network Management Technology Group (NMTG)
BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – is a catch-phrase capturing the idea that consumers are bringing more and more devices into the connected home network. It is no longer just the early adopters who have non-PC devices they want to use while at home. There has been a literal explosion of electronic devices that consumers want to share content and data across – smartphones, tablets, IPTVs, network-attached storage (NAS), and even game consoles. Each of these devices generates different types of traffic and consumes content in completely different ways. The number of new usage scenarios to support is daunting.
BYOD also refers to the idea that people want to be able to bring and use their own devices in other people’s homes. If you want to look something up on the Internet, for example, you don’t want to have to borrow your friend’s phone to do so. You want to do it on your own device. Similarly, today’s Read More »
Demand for Internet services continues to build. The increasing popularity of smartphones, tablets, and video services is creating a “data tsunami” that threatens to overwhelm service providers’ networks.
So far, service providers have mainly reacted to the data flood with technical counter-measures—for example, by deploying Wi-Fi and small cells to offload data in heavy traffic areas such as sports stadiums and downtown urban areas. The Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) believes that operators should also act on the demand side, which can be best influenced by pricing.
Back in the early 2000s, network operators were clamoring to build their Internet customer base; they replaced their old metered models for dial-up Internet, and enticed new subscribers with unlimited, flat rate, “all-you-can-eat” broadband data plans. This pricing strategy has enabled mass-market penetration—first in fixed, then in mobile. But it has not increased ARPU.
While flat rate pricing plans have contributed to the waves of Internet data swamping the capacity of broadband operators, these plans have done little to create value from all that traffic. In fact, the decoupling of connectivity and service layers can destroy value if you compete on easily comparable flat rate access prices only. Flat rates shift the focus from quality and service differentiation to price competition, and expose operators to the risk of cost-plus-based pricing, with diminishing returns.
In some countries, fixed-broadband providers have started altering flat rates by introducing some forms of usage-based pricing: “throttling” data download speeds for the heaviest users, switching them to potentially more costly metered data plans, or introducing new tiered price plans. Just in the last few months in the United States, both Time Warner Cable and Comcast made announcements about their plans to experiment with usage-based pricing.
While usage-based pricing models are required to fight “bandwidth hogs,” they must be carefully introduced and managed. Customers have learned to love flat rates. The 2011 Cisco IBSG Connected Life Market Watch study found that Read More »
We released our latest in the Fundamentals series earlier this month and it is trending quite well. The 802.11ac standard sounds like a step backwards alphabetically…but it will soon be an incredible step forward forward for WiFi once it is ratified by the IEEE. Watch this latest fundamentals to get comfortable with the truth. 802.11n is still your best bet for 2012 and into 2013 as we continue to partner on the standards process but the future is bright indeed!
By Ross Fujii, CTO of Cisco Network Management Technology Group (NMTG)
By Ross Fujii, CTO of Cisco Network Management Technology Group (NMTG)
