Cisco: We are broadband

Cisco last week gathered media and analysts in New York to make some bold proclamations on the value of broadband access in an effort to proliferate service rollout and stimulate demand for its products, including the new ones announced this week.

Cisco last week gathered media and analysts in New York to make some bold proclamations on the value of broadband access in an effort to proliferate service rollout and stimulate demand for its products, including the new ones announced this week.

Claiming that broadband is the “key enabler” for new multimedia applications and bundled services demanded by enterprises, Cisco officials said they are working with governmental bodies and stimulating competition between incumbent carriers and multicable system operators (MSO) in order to maintain or increase the rate of adoption of broadband connections. Though broadband has reached 10% adoption among consumers as fast or faster than other technologies – such as PCs, cell phones and VCRs – Cisco officials say it is still unknown how long it will take broadband connections such as cable, DSL and Ethernet to reach 50% adoption.

The four years it took broadband to reach 10% adoption is “good,” according to Mike Volpi, senior vice president of Cisco’s routing technology group. “But we need do some work to keep up the adoption pace,” he acknowledges.

One way to keep pace is to incent MSOs and regional Bell operating carriers to attack each other’s revenue streams, Volpi asserts. If MSOs offer a broadband service – such as second line voice-over-IP – that goes right after the butter on an RBOC’s bread, RBOCs will respond in kind.

An RBOC’s growth in new lines is tied to second-line service.

“They’ll use our technology to attack each other’s revenue streams,” Volpi says. “We’ll get those guys to compete with each other through newer technologies from us.”

Cisco is also working with other vendors to lobby governments around the globe to facilitate the rollout of broadband. Through the Technology Network (TechNet), a national network of CEOs from leading technology companies, Cisco is encouraging governments to go easy on regulations and actually drive the demand for broadband.

In the U.S. specifically, the government has been both an enabler and an inhibitor of broadband deployment, says Laura Ipsen, Cisco’s vice president for worldwide government affairs. Cisco is not advising the government to lean any particular way on specific broadband-enabling bills, like Tauzin-Dingell, or relief of Section 271 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, she says.

But Cisco is seeing some encouraging signs, like President Bush’s mention of broadband (and correct pronunciation) at a recent address in Waco, Texas, Ipsen says.