4G
This week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is highlighting the coming stampede of 4G wireless services across the globe. Cisco and Juniper are set to announce new products to ease service provider transition to 4G, support new service offerings, and enable easier transition for users roaming between 2G, 3G, 4G and WiFi services. Juniper’s initiatives build upon its “Project Falcon” announcement last fall, as it aims to help wireless providers adopt 4G, enable seamless roaming between WiFi and 4G, and deliver new rich media services such as video over mobile networks. Meanwhile, Cisco takes the wraps off the ASR 5000, its first product from last year’s acquisition of Starent Networks. The ASR 5000 is also designed to help providers deliver 4G while improving their ability to support a richer set of applications for mobile users. For the enterprise these announcements underscore the rise of 4G (already available in the United States from providers such as Clearwire). 4G opens the door to new mobile applications for field workers such as video, new remote access options for teleworkers, and the potential to save money by transitioning voice from per-minute cellular services to voice-over-IP-over-4G. Nemertes finds mobility is increasingly mission critical, but the ability to deliver mobile applications is often constrained by bandwidth, cost, and service availability. As 4G network availability grows, IT managers from both telecom and applications must come together to develop mobility strategies that enable competitive advantage by taking advantage of the ability of 4G services to deliver a richer set of applications to both customers and employees.
