Clearwire revamping 4G core with Cisco gear

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) will become the primary packet pusher on Clearwire's WiMax network, unifying Clearwire's IP core on a single next-generation platform. Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) and Cisco today announced a multi-tiered partnership that will see Cisco provide much of the 4G network's IP core, supply WiMax-embedded devices and open up Cisco's small business sales channels to the wireless broadband provider.

While not displacing the core equipment Motorola (NYSE:MOT) and Samsung have already installed, Cisco will begin supplying backbone gear and moving out toward the network edge. Unlike in a traditional wireless network, the flat IP and open interfaces of the WiMax standard allow operators to cherry-pick different vendors for different network elements, said Scott Richardson, chief strategy officer for Clearwire. Cisco will initially supply its 7600 Series edge routers, its ONS Series multiservice transport platforms and its firewall and home-agent solutions, but Richardson hinted that Cisco's role as a network vendor could become even larger, extending even into the radio access network.

"It's very much an open network, whereas the base station provider and the router provider—which in the cellular world are typically one vendor—are going to be different vendors. Cisco has many products in this area. In WiMax, they also have radios. We consider them a potential supplier for all of the network elements we're building towards, but the core of the relationship starts with the core IP network and then grows out from there."

So far, Motorola and Samsung have supplied much of the core infrastructure in Clearwire's network, deploying their Access Serving Network (ASN) gateways in the markets. In theory, the ASN is supposed to be vendor- and network-agnostic, but in practice, the WiMax industry has created a hodgepodge of ASN products ranging from the proprietary to three standardized, yet distinct, ASN profiles that support varying degrees of interoperability. Both Samsung and Motorola offer ASN gateways using different profiles of the same WiMax standard, making them both interoperable.

Clearwire, however, is trying to take a different view of the network, Richardson said. Instead of taking the traditional telecom approach of separating the core network into distinct elements, each with a specific purpose, Clearwire is approaching the core as gigantic IP routing platform and making its decisions accordingly. Though Richardson didn't explicitly state Cisco would have an advantage, that approach clearly favors the world's largest IP equipment vendor. "You have a base station, which is essentially a big carrier-grade access point," Richardson said. "You have routers connecting to it, and from that router on back, that's really just a packet network."

Richardson said Motorola and Samsung wouldn't simply be kicked out of the core. Clearwire will keep its current ASN gateways in place and continue to provision their equipment, while Cisco will begin its deployments in the backbone and edge aggregation points connecting to the wireless vendors' ASN gateways. But Richardson emphasized that one of the primary reasons for the partnership was to create a truly open solution. Cisco won't claim 100% of the core infrastructure business, he said, but they have the potential to claim a large portion of it.

"The existing network that we've deployed doesn't need to change much, but obviously we have a lot of growth and deployment ahead of us," Richardson said. "As part of the go-forward network, we're actually choosing a more open model, in that we're opening up the interfaces between the base station and the ASN gateway, which is a router. This class of router is something that Cisco has an opportunity to participate in in our business. For this phase, just to be clear, the relationship we're talking about is for core network components. This really starts at the core backbone of the network and then goes out to the edge the network."

The debate over the nature of the 4G core is crossing into the long-term evolution (LTE) camp as well. As operators start approaching their core networks as IP routing platforms rather than a series of specialized gateways, many vendors have fundamentally changed the way they've designed their core infrastructures. Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) turned over the development of its LTE evolved packed core to its wireline routing group. Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) has kept the design of LTE's mobility management elements in its wireless group but is building all of the gateway elements on Redback's SmartEdge router platform.