The coming clash of much more mobile Internet traffic and a shortage of licensed spectrum will lead to a redesign of mobile access networks. There will be many more cell sites, each serving fewer subscribers. Many of these small cell sites will be “pico-cells.” As these many pico-cells get added to the mobile access network the bandwidth bottleneck shifts to the mobile backhaul network. Mobility control and management is needed at the edge of the backhaul network and it is that technology that WiChorus and Starent have designed and produced.

Optical transport vendors (like Ciena) as well as router vendors (like Juniper Networks) need those kinds of mobile management platforms to complement their existing products for the mobile backhaul market. Hence, we see more acquistions forthcoming in this space. It might even be conceivable for Juniper to merge with Ciena. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?

Alan J Weissberger

“It remains to be seen if Tellabs is able to penetrate the mobile infrastructure equipment market with the acquisition of WiChorus.

The legacy U.S. mobile operators are all on the 3G/LTE track and buy wireless infrastructure from network equipment vendors such as Ericsson, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia-Siemens. For example, Ericsson sells to Sprint, T-Mobile USA, and Rogers in Canada. NSN sells to Bell Canada and Telus. Cisco sells routers to AT&T and VZW, while Starent Networks (which Cisco plans to acquire) sells most of its gear to VZW.

To date, Wichorus has only sold WiMAX ASN Gateways as a “packet core.”

The Evolved packet core (EPC) solution for LTE is a combination of IP routing hardware and session management and control software. Not clear what product(s) Wichorus has planned for EPC.

Meanwhile, Tellabs presence is in transport based markets- like wireless backhaul, cross-connect and optical transmission. Previous attempts to get into high performance routing (via a acquisition in 1999) have failed.

Does Tellabs now plan to sell the Wichorus ASN Gateway along with optical transport products for WiMAX backhaul? Will Wichorus have a competitive EPC product that Tellabs can leverage to legacy mobile carriers?

With LTE years away, will Wichorus be a player in 3G/3G+ mobile packet core market? These are the critical questions analysts have to ask to determine if this acquistion will enable Tellabs to penetrate the mobile Internet infrastructure business.”

My response will follow in a subsequent comment.