Juniper's mobile network strategy takes flight

Stuart Corner
Friday, 30 October 2009 07:41

IT Industry - Strategy

Juniper Networks has revealed that it is working on developing routers for the evolved packet core of future cellular networks, with an initiative code-named Project Falcon.

The existence of Project Falcon was revealed by Kim Perdikou executive vice president and general manager of Juniper's Infrastructure Products Group during her presentation at Juniper's multi-announcement press conference on October 29.

Perdikou said: "We kicked of Falcon earlier in the year which is a project to develop and deliver to the market the new universal edge 3G router...That means it will come with subscriber management and the billing etc and we will deliver a mobile packet core but it wil be on a universal edge [router] that you can run any other types of services. It won't just be one box built for one service." She declined to give any indication of when commercial products might emerge from the project.

The evolved packet core is a feature of future LTE and WiMAX networks, not of today's 2G and 3G networks. However the demand for mobile data bandwidth is accelerating the planned uptake of LTE networks. Earlier this month Infonetics released forecasts estimating the number users served by LTE networks at 72 million by 2013. In August the GSA released the results of a survey saying there were 39 LTE network commitments worldwide, an increase of 50 percent since March 2009. Thirty one of these networks were expected to be in service by end 2012.

Perdikou said Juniper was open to partnering with others in the development of the product and said the company was banking on the much improved performance of new MX routers powered by its new Junos Trio chipset  to give it a competitive edge in the market.

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