Larry LangGeneral Manager and VPCisco Systems' Mobile Wireless Group

As a former Bell System engineer and longtime IP proselytizer, Larry Lang is uniquely qualified to convey Cisco's wireless message — especially since that message is all about mobilizing packets.

Lang is adept at describing Cisco's mobile mission in terms very familiar to anyone who knows Cisco's rap: It's not just about certain technologies or individual applications and how they fit into a wireless network or strategy. It's about seamlessness. It's about making mobile data as prevalent as mobile voice. It is, as Lang puts it, about “enabling the mobile Internet edge.”

“We're trying to think about mobility from the point of view of the end user, as opposed to just cellular,” Lang said. “If you want to be a mobile company, you have to think about how Wi-Fi fits in, how broadband fits in and so forth. It becomes an inter-networking problem.”

Cisco's proposed solution to that internetworking problem is the Cisco Mobile Exchange, the engine at the core of many of the mobile wireless projects in which Lang and his division are engaged with service providers. Essentially, products based on the Cisco Mobile Exchange connect two worlds and enable ubiquity in functions like application recognition, pricing and billing across multiple types of networks. The concept is very much a natural extension of Cisco's IP-centric philosophy. The only added variable is mobility.

“This edge function between the world of mobility and the world of the Internet is the logical place to do all these kinds of things,” Lang said. “What makes seamlessness possible is mobile IP.”

The problem of integrating functions across a wide array of protocols becomes more acute in wireless all the time, Lang said, as mobile virtual network operators enter the picture, content partnerships are struck and new technologies such as WiMAX are introduced. The challenge for Lang and his division is to stay one step ahead of carriers' thinking and industry trends, anticipating what needs will arise and how Cisco's platforms can be applied to address them. Said Lang: “The biggest problem we have is that our customers are very creative.”