Cisco Bolsters Mobile Portfolio

Starent sells technology to Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, Sprint and China Telecom that provides enhanced cell phone features like video, multimedia messaging and VoIP.

Its gateway hardware and software do much the same thing as the traditional combination of routers, switches and servers that mobile operators usually use when upgrading their networks, but costs a lot less.

The acquisition is consistent with Cisco's relatively recent but intense interest in mobile Internet systems, particularly as it sees the growing importance of smartphones and other connected devices in both the enterprise and consumer spaces. And while a large part of the company's business is in direct sales of telephony and voice-data converged systems to enterprise customers, it is also developing a significant business with carriers and other service providers, particularly in the burgeoning area of mobile data communications.

Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers said Starent "products and engineering talent will greatly benefit our Service Provider customers as they build out their Mobile Internet offerings."

In the announcement, the company said, "The Mobile Internet is at an inflection point as IP-enabled Smartphones and other connected mobile devices gain rapid acceptance. Service Providers have been actively investing in this market as global mobile data traffic is expected to more than double every year through 2013, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index."

Starent's mobile infrastructure applications are used by carriers to scale their mobile infrastructure and generate margins by giving end users more reason to use value-added services. The company provides the multimedia intelligence, core network functions and services to manage access from any 2.5G, 3G and 4G radio network to a mobile operator's packet core network. Starent Networks' access-independent technology is deployed in CDMA2000 (1X, EV-DO), UMTS/HSPA and WiMax networks.

Starent technology compresses multiple applications into a single box and uses software-based deep packet inspection (DPI) technology, service steering, and intelligent traffic control to dynamically monitor and control sessions on a per-subscriber/per-flow basis. Carriers can use these applications to manage subscribers, billing and session policy enforcement.

Unlike other platforms, call control and packet forwarding paths on its ST40 multimedia core platform are separated on different control and data switch fabrics, reducing the number of traffic flow inefficiencies, which diminishes latency, and ensures faster call setup time and handoffs.

The platform’s distributed system also allocates tasks and services across the entire system, allowing mobile operators to handle a greater number of concurrent calls, optimize resource usage, and deliver enhanced services.

The acquisition is expected to close during the first half of calendar year 2010.