Cisco CEO: 5G will bring unexpected benefits to Cisco

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Cisco is primarily known for its switches and routers for service providers and enterprises. It is not a major competitor to vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia in the field of wireless access networks. But during the third-quarter 2019 earnings call this week, Cisco executive Chuck Robbins mentioned "wired and wireless" networks several times.

“We are entering an era of truly immersive, ubiquitous wireless connectivity, which creates the need for high-density, low-latency performance and real-time experiences across both wired and wireless networks,” Robbins said, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha. “Our folks like to say that behind every great wireless network there is a great wired network,”

In fact, Rakuten has hired the company to help it build a new mobile network in Japan. Cisco is building Rakuten's network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) with 4,000 edge nodes. In addition to software, Cisco also provides routing and switching hardware. Cisco is also the main system integrator for Rakuten's virtual telco cloud.

During the earnings call, Robbins said, “With the addition of our Catalyst 9000 family of products, we have completed the most comprehensive enterprise networking portfolio refresh in our history. We have re-architected our entire access portfolio with intent-based networking across wired and wireless.

Robbins also mentioned 5G, saying Cisco is helping telecom companies build their core networks ahead of the mass rollout of 5G. Although Cisco is already selling packet core technology to carriers for 5G networks, he said, "The most important thing for us is when they start to evolve their networks to accommodate the traffic." "We've always said we feel that's sometime in 2020."

Operators are using existing core networks to conduct early trials on 5G. "We believe that at some point in the future, when the number of connections increases and the capacity reaches a certain point, they will obviously start to build out these new backbone networks specifically for 5G infrastructure, and we will generally play a role in that," he said.

While Robbins focused on the telecom company's core network during the earnings call, the company has an investment in Altiostar, a startup that has developed technology to virtualize operations. Altiostar is also working with Rakuten.

Robbins spoke on the earnings call about Wi-Fi 6. Cisco recently announced new Wi-Fi 6 access points in its Catalyst and Meraki portfolios, as well as the Catalyst 9600 core switch series.

“Wi-Fi 6 is really what used to be called 802.11ax,” Robbins said. “What’s happening now is as you put these high-performance access points into organizations, you get the possibility of low-latency, immersive experiences, and then it’s also going to drive the need to upgrade the backbone.”