Cisco And Ericsson Tout ‘Evolved’ Wi-Fi Range

The latest development in Ericsson and Cisco’s partnership will see the two companies combine their products into a range of ‘Evolved Wi-Fi Network’ (EWN) products to help operators better serve their customers and boost indoor coverage.

The EWN range comprises Ericsson’s core network and standards access alongside Cisco’s Wi-Fi technologies and is intending to help operators manage growing amounts of traffic on their networks by offloading it from cellular infrastructure to wireless.

Ericsson Cisco

This union will manifest itself in small cell, operator Wi-Fi, traffic steering which selects between cellular and Wi-Fi networks depending on which is optimal and core network integration for applications such as Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi).

“Our strategic partnership brings together the capabilities of two leading players in networking, mobility and cloud, creating the best end-to-end solutions and opportunities for our customers,” said Rima Qureshi, who heads up the partnership for Ericsson. “By adding Wi-Fi solutions into the partnership, we will enable our customers to offer best-in-class Wi-Fi in their networks, complemented by our leading 3GPP portfolio and services organization.”

“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,” added Yvette Kanouff, head of Cisco’s service provider business unit. “ng Wi -Fi solutions of the highest quality performance and reliability.”

Cisco and Ericsson joined forced in November 2015 and have a wide ranging deal that includes networks, data centre, cloud, management and routing. Both firms have an eye on 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). Both resell each others products and have worked with Intel on a 5G router.

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