Cisco Mobility Services Platform Solution Overview

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Simplify complexity and rapidly monetize innovative 5G services

Cisco’s® Mobility Services Platform: 5G value acceleration as a service

Cisco radically streamlines 5G deployments, empowering Communication Service Providers to instantly configure and activate innovative use cases that seamlessly connect people, places, and things.

By simplifying rollouts, CSPs can swiftly monetize a wide variety of cutting-edge services. This drastically cuts the time, cost, and effort required to leverage 5G’s potential for driving revenue, business value, and enterprise adoption.

Unlock New 5G and IoT Revenue Streams with Enterprise Mobility Services

5G promises unmatched connectivity speeds, presenting immense potential for CSPs to enable innovative services. However, capitalizing on this potential poses major hurdles: high costs, complexity, unclear business cases, long deployment timelines, and substantial integration challenges. These obstacles have stalled many CSP 5G deployments.

The connected mobility opportunity

Figure 1.               

The connected mobility opportunity

To overcome these barriers, the Cisco Mobility Services Platform offers an as-a-service solution for rapidly deploying value-added 5G offerings. By providing pre-integrated, cloud-native 5G core network functions, it streamlines the complexity of mobile service delivery at scale.

Powered by proven Cisco technologies for 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), and multicloud, the platform simplifies operations via a flexible subscription model. This allows CSPs to redirect investments toward developing compelling 5G use cases across verticals that drive sustainability through new revenue streams.

The Mobility Services Platform empowers CSP innovation, agility, and speed to market—unlocking 5G’s full potential to connect people, places, and things in new ways.

The Cisco Mobility Services Platform

Figure 2.               

The Cisco Mobility Services Platform

Cisco Mobility Services Platform provides CSPs with a simplified path to unlocking new growth with monetized enterprise services

Our aim is to abstract away the complexity of subscriber onboarding, retention, and experience from the underlying mobility network architecture and functions. This simplification empowers customers to provide flexible and tailored 5G offerings aligned with specific business needs. In short, by handling network complexities, we empower our customers to deliver on the promise of 5G in connecting people, places, and things in new ways.

New revenue streams, monetization opportunities, and marketplace

     Increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) by bundling high-value enterprise applications with premium 5G offerings.

     Diversify services beyond connectivity by expanding into IT services, analytics, automation, security, and more through targeted 5G and IoT solutions.

     Create new revenue channels beyond connectivity with a digital storefront for monetizing specialized services tailored to verticals.

The platform empowers providers to unlock the potential of 5G to drive sustainability through new monetization opportunities. By offering innovative vertical use cases rather than merely connectivity, CSPs can customize bundled solutions to increase ARPU and expand their role in diverse 5GaaS offerings.

Faster time to market and increased agility

     Accelerate time to value by avoiding lost time and revenue from network re-architecture and infrastructure investments.

     Bring new services to market faster through flexible service creation, rapid prototyping, and industry-standard APIs (Application Programmable Interfaces) for service catalogues and ordering.

     Cloud-based platform ideal for rapidly developing and launching next-gen 5G innovations.

     Easily scale services up and down based on changing business needs.

     Enhanced agility to deploy additional mobile, analytics, and automation solutions by leveraging a cloud delivery model.

The platform empowers providers with the agility, flexibility, and faster time to market needed to continuously deliver compelling 5G solutions and drive new revenue streams.

Improve profitability and operational efficiency

     Reduce CapEx by shifting infrastructure ownership and operations to Cisco through a subscription model. This enables customers to redirect investments into developing compelling 5G services and enhancing customer experience.

     Minimize financial and execution risks with a zero-CapEx, subscription-based model.

The platform allows CSPs to optimize profitability and operational efficiency. By leveraging Cisco’s infrastructure management, CSPs gain flexibility to refocus investments on driving revenue through value-added 5G solutions.

Deliver exceptional customer experiences with increased loyalty

     Enable secure, consistent customer experiences with end-to-end visibility and control leveraging Cisco’s service provider and enterprise portfolios.

     Build stronger customer loyalty with specialized 5G services tailored to enterprise business needs, driving continued long-term contracts.

By providing customized and secure solutions for meeting specific use cases, CSPs can foster increased customer loyalty and retention. This sustains revenue streams over longer horizons by continually delivering exceptional 5G experiences.

Fuel collaboration and innovation with an API-enabled developer ecosystem

     Comprehensive ecosystem empowering developers, enterprises, and operators to easily build, distribute, discover, and monetize mobile network–based products and services globally.

     Allows instant activation of partner solutions to accelerate time to market for innovative offerings.

By enabling an ecosystem for co-creation through open APIs and strong collaboration channels, CSPs can tap into shared innovation to quickly turn promising ideas into innovative 5G services.

Related image, diagram or screenshot

Figure 3.               

Cisco Mobility Services Platform eliminates roadblocks, drives revenue, and reduces cost and risk

Top CSP 5G adoption challenges addressed by Cisco’s Mobility Services Platform

While facing headwinds in consumer mobile, service providers have a promising growth avenue in higher-value enterprise and wholesale mobile connectivity segments. However, effectively capturing this opportunity requires fundamentally rethinking how connectivity platforms are architected and delivered to support diverse, sophisticated enterprise use cases at scale.

Communication Service Providers (CSPs) need to swiftly evolve their wireless network technologies to overcome key barriers to 5G adoption. By simplifying IT complexities in network management and enabling cost-efficient digitization of connectivity, Cisco’s Mobility Services Platform empowers CSPs to deliver unified 5G experiences for global business customers.

The platform tackles major complexity, cost, and time-to-market obstacles that have hindered widespread 5G deployments. With Cisco’s cloud-first approach combining simplified infrastructure with expertise in large-scale mobility service delivery, CSPs can rapidly roll out innovative offerings that maximize the potential of 5G for driving business value.

Profitable monetization difficulty

     While 5G enables new revenue opportunities, the ROI (Return on Investment) is still uncertain. With heavy network investment requirements amidst a maturing market, finding new sources of revenue and ways to monetize 5G use cases can be problematic for CSPs.

     CSPs need to identify new revenue streams as legacy services decline (for example, voice, SMS). This requires capabilities to launch and monetize innovative new services quickly.

Remove complexity with a focus on operational simplicity

     Integrating advanced capabilities, multi-tier architectures, edge compute, and network slicing makes 5G deployments significantly more complex compared to past network generations.

     Organizations need to focus on operational simplicity, ease of doing business, and enterprise integration.

Transform existing business models

     5G requires an evolution of traditional Mobile Network Operator (MNO) business models, including expansive partner ecosystem and transitioning from connectivity to digital platform providers, with diverse use cases.

Improve network agility and automation

     Manual network operations are costly and slow innovation.  

     Lack of automation limits the ability to respond rapidly to customer demands.

Overcoming customer experience shortcomings for 5G reward

     Growing competition requires excellent customer experiences to attract and retain users.

     High churn rates result if offerings don’t align with customer needs.

     Personalized, contextual services are becoming expected.

     Bridging the gap between 5G’s promised and delivered benefits.

     Justifying premium pricing through tangible 5G advancements that map to customer priorities.

 

Top CSP Challenges

Figure 4.               

Top CSP Challenges

Providing a cloud-based approach to swiftly deploy innovative enterprise services that connect people, things, and places

This Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model leverages proven Cisco technologies like IoT Control Center, Packet Core, and APIs to reduce complexity.

The goal is to accelerate time to market and business value for targeted use cases through simplified integration. This cloud platform shifts infrastructure ownership to Cisco, enabling CSPs to focus on developing compelling 5G solutions. The as-a-service commercial model also improves the economics of 5G investments by eliminating upfront CapEx and reducing early OpEx before revenue generation.

The platform offers ready-made and customizable templates to instantly activate services. It provides a unified API that abstracts away complex, disparate technologies, streamlining network configuration, service activation, subscriber, and SIM management. Pre-integrated, enterprise-ready value-added services from Cisco allow CSPs to immediately launch and monetize services.

The Mobility Services Platform supports a full range of core capabilities, including:

     Data and voice session management (VoNR [Voice Over New Radio], VoLTE [Voice over LTE], EPS Fallback) for 4G, 5G NSA (nonstandalone), 5G SA, and Wi-Fi, with IPv4 and IPv6 support

     Mobility and handover across access technologies

     Inbound and outbound voice/data roaming

     Lawful intercept and emergency calling capabilities

     Charging and event records

     Dynamic policy control and usage monitoring

     Inline user-plane services: application detection and network address translation

     Common use case support for eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband), IoT, and FWA (fixed wireless access), including private and enterprise deployments

     SIM and subscriber management as well as provisioning

By tackling major cost and agility obstacles, Cisco's as-a-service solution empowers CSPs to rapidly deliver and monetize high-value 5G offerings. This cloud-based approach reduces risk, accelerates time to value, and unlocks 5G's full potential through simplified integration with existing infrastructure.

The Dilemma: Balancing Legacy and Future-Ready Portfolios Service providers face the challenge of balancing the complexity of their existing business portfolios and technology stacks, while simultaneously aiming to protect current revenue streams and position themselves for an even more complex future enterprise mobility landscape. Harmonizing these competing priorities is extremely challenging. Introducing an adjacent, future-ready mobility services platform alongside legacy systems emerges as an elegant solution.

Cisco’s Mobility Services Platform complements and extends CSPs’ existing network investments to meet the business needs of their enterprise customers more quickly and cost-effectively. By simply plugging their Radio Access Networks (RANs) into Cisco’s cloud-hosted platform instead of replacing the RANs, CSPs can rapidly augment and scale their capabilities. With Cisco providing and managing the additional network resources, the Mobility Services Platform works with the CSPs’ installed base to enable services and business outcomes that CSPs can bundle into offerings for enterprise customers.

The platform also offers the benefits of future-proofing Service Providers through an as-a-service model, ensuring customers always have access to an updated, simplified, and innovative product at a global scale.

One Platform for Enterprise Mobile Services

Figure 5.               

One Platform for Enterprise Mobile Services

Use cases

Cisco's Mobility Services Platform empowers CSPs to deliver on the promise of connecting people, places, and things by enabling them to offer a wide range of innovative mobility use cases including the examples found in the table below:

Mobility Services Subscription Offers

Key Enterprise Use Cases Addressed

Connected Places with Enterprise Private Networking (Private 5G)

Manufacturing:

  Automated guided vehicles for materials transport
  Augmented reality for production line troubleshooting
  Video analytics for quality control
  Digital twin simulations for virtual factory modeling

Mining:

  Autonomous haul trucks
  Remote operation of machinery
  High-res cameras and sensors for condition monitoring
  Personnel and equipment tracking

Ports:

  Automated cranes, trucks, and straddle carriers
  Container tracking and analytics
  Yard automation and optimization

Oil and Gas:

  Video surveillance and analytics of remote assets
  Connected sensors for predictive maintenance
  Robot-assisted inspections and repairs
  Remote expert guidance for field technicians

Utilities:

  Automated grid reconfiguration and outage response
  AR-assisted field worker processes
  Connected sensors and analytics for predictive maintenance.
  Drones with thermal cameras for inspections
  Private 5G enables the real-time connectivity and reliability needed for these innovative deployments.

Connected Things with IoT-aaS

Connected Cars:

  Real-time navigation and traffic updates
  Predictive vehicle maintenance
  Usage-based insurance
  In-vehicle entertainment/productivity
  Enhanced roadside assistance.

Autonomous Vehicles:

  High-definition remote monitoring and control
  Geo-fencing and fleet management
  Software, sensor, and map updates
  Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication for safety and efficiency

Asset Tracking:

  Real-time visibility of equipment/vehicle location and status
  Predictive maintenance alerts based on telemetry data
  Contactless user authentication and access control
  Automated inventory management

Smart Meters:

  Real-time utility consumption monitoring
  Dynamic pricing and billing optimization
  Automated outage and restoration notifications
  New customer onboarding and service activation

Fleet Management:

  Vehicle health monitoring and preventative maintenance
  Route optimization, dispatching, and traffic avoidance
  Driver safety, credentialing, and hours tracking
  Cold chain/perishable goods monitoring

Connected People with Enterprise Mobile Data

Fixed Wireless Access:

  High-speed home/business connectivity alternative to fiber
  Support for remote work/learning during outages
  Affordable internet access in rural areas

Secure Collaboration:

  Real-time unified communications across modalities
  BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) enablement with enhanced end-user privacy
  Global team coordination and document sharing
  Enterprise social networking

Secure Remote Offices:

  Site-to-site VPN (Virtual Private Network) connectivity over mobile networks
  Secure guest Wi-Fi access and BYOD policies
  Unified endpoint management and access controls

Telemedicine:

  Remote health monitoring and assessments
  HD video appointments and mobile test result sharing
  Wearables for patient vitals streaming to cloud electronic health records
  Enterprise imaging data transfer to cloud analytics

Augmented and Virtual Reality:

  Immersive simulations, training, and troubleshooting
  Multiuser mobile gaming
  3D/volumetric video streaming
  Onsite visualization overlaying physical environment

Cisco Mobility Services Subscription Offers and Example Use Cases Addressed

Figure 6.               

Cisco Mobility Services Subscription Offers and Example Use Cases Addressed

The Cisco Advantage

Built using Cisco’s proven portfolio of 5G, edge, and cloud innovations, the Mobility Services Platform accelerates the launch of monetized services and use cases. This minimizes risks and costs while maximizing new revenue opportunities across industries like automotive, energy, logistics, and healthcare.

The platform features the world’s first fully automated, cloud-native converged 5G core with distributed edge deployment. This simplifies the evolution from 3G and 4G while eliminating complexity and time barriers. Enterprises gain the visibility and control they need.

Cisco has over a decade of experience enabling IoT solutions. Our IoT Control Center, the industry-leading platform, is used by 60+ CSPs and 32,000 enterprises to manage connectivity for 250 million+ devices, including over 100 million connected cars.

This unparalleled expertise in both IT and operational technology places makes Cisco uniquely positioned to help CSPs rapidly launch and monetize innovative 5G solutions.

Cisco's cloud-based Mobility Services Platform addresses the critical roadblocks hindering service providers' enterprise growth ambitions. By radically simplifying the complexity and eliminating deployment barriers, the platform empowers operators to rapidly monetize innovative, scalable enterprise mobile connectivity services leveraging Cisco's global scale and robust partner ecosystem.

For more information

Cisco’s innovative Mobility Services Platform accelerates the delivery of monetizable IoT, public, and private 5G-as-a-service offers to enable smart use cases and drive enterprise adoption. By seamlessly integrating with existing networks and Wi-Fi, Cisco simplifies 5G operations, reduces costs, and supports pervasive mobility.

     To learn more about Cisco IoT Control Center here.

     To learn more about Cisco Converged Mobile Core, click here.

     To learn more about Cisco IoT aaS, click here.

     To learn more about Cisco Private 5G, click here.

     To schedule a demonstration of the Cisco Mobility Services Platform, contact your Cisco sales representative.

 

 

 

 

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