What Redback acquisition means to Ericsson

Now that you're in the carrier edge routing market with Redback, does Ericsson have any interest in service provider core routing?

The good thing with Redback's technology is it gives us a lot of flexibility. The technology can be scaled down to smaller aggregation roles, and Ethernet switch routing. But it's also possible to scale it up to get into part of the core routing market. We have not decided exactly which track we will go down first. That's something we'll need to conclude. But one of the prerequisites of the acquisition was to find a technology that can fit into Ericsson's products, but also adds flexibility in how we address different parts of the market. We know the IP market in general is not so standardized as some of the markets we already operate in, such as the mobile space.

What is an edge market today may be more of carrier Ethernet market tomorrow. And maybe the technology in the core market today could become more of an edge technology in the future. It's hard to judge where a technology will fit in a couple years time. But the flexibility in the Redback products is there to do a lot of things.

Why are IP and Ethernet technologies important to mobile providers and equipment makers?

There is a change in mobile backhaul technology, from 2G to 3G to 4G. This is going from T-1/E-1 TDM technology to Ethernet, IP-based backhaul networks. So that's one important transition for us to follow. If you really look into the 2009, 2010 timeframe when [High Speed Packet Access -- 14Mbps mobile data] becomes more commonly deployed, those networks will be standardized on IP between mobile base stations and access gateway nodes. In that sense, all the transmission, all the logic will happen in an IP environment. So from that sense, we believe it's very important for us to have very good ownership of edge and access routing [technologies].

You'll see convergence where both wireline and wireless networks are working on the same IP network. But that IP network needs to have telephone-grade characteristics. So it's very important for our mobile business to have ownership of this technology, but equally important for our wireline business to grow into [IP] and make sure we cover it from two angles.

What is driving the growth in the carrier edge routing market?

There are a number of things. There is a consolidation of business services, from ATM, Frame Relay and X.25 into IP VPN-type services with MPLS. That's driving a lot of new products into the network. The move away from [legacy] access services is driving a change in architecture. All the speeds are going up tremendously.