In November 2015, Cisco announced a broad partnership with Ericsson that offered the promise of adding up to $1 billion in new revenue to each company’s revenues by 2018. Now in early 2017, the two company are showing some of the initial results of the partnership with new Wi-Fi solutions and a win with Telefonica Guatemala.
The Telefonica Guatemala deal will see the South America telecom build out a new network backbone that includes Cisco’s ASR 9010 and 1001 routers. The deal also includes Ericsson integration services as Telefonica Guatemala moves to a new IP network backbone.
“The combination of Ericsson’s and Cisco’s leading integration services and IP routers will enable Telefonica’s network modernization,” Clayton Cruz, Vice President, Ericsson Latin America and Caribbean said in a statement. “It allows Telefonica to address the high demand of new subscribers while enhancing the mobile experience for existing 3G and LTE customers.”
The new win with Telefonica Guatemala builds on previous deals announced by Cisco and Ericsson in 2016, including deals with 3 Italy, Vodafone Portugal, Aster Dominican Republic and Cable & Wireless in Caribbean.
Wi-Fi
Beyond just integration services, Ericsson and Cisco now also work together with a new set of Wi-Fi solutions. The new integrated offering is being branded by the two companies as Evolved Wi-Fi Networks (EWN). The EWN portfolio integrates Cisco IP-based Wi-Fi with Ericsson’s 3GPP access and core networks.
As part of the EWN, the two vendors will provide integrated solutions for indoor small cell deployments as well as operator Wi-Fi for telecoms. Additionally, the EWN includes a traffic steering capability that will enable operators to route users between Wi-Fi and mobile access networks.
“With Wi-Fi traffic predicted to grow to 50 percent of the total IP traffic by 2020, a top priority for service providers is to deliver the best possible connected experiences to their customers,” Yvette Kanouff, SVP & GM of the Service Provider Business Unit at Cisco, said in a statement. “Through our extended strategic partnership with Ericsson, we are committed to providing Wi–Fi solutions of the highest quality performance and reliability.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
