Today, Cisco (News - Alert) announced plans to buy policy control outfit BroadHop in yet another move by the communications equipment giant to enable smarter and more scalable networking. The move comes less than a month following Cisco’s move to purchase network planning and traffic management outfit, Cariden.

BroadHop sells the Quantum (News - Alert) Network Suite of policy management solutions. The explosion of data on U.S. service providers’ networks is creating a lot of interest in policy management. Such solutions can be used by service providers to put the lid on heavy data users and segment their market and create bundles targeting low-, middle- and high-end customers.

In the Dec. 18 Cisco blog, called The Platform, Hilton Romanski wrote: “With global IP traffic projected to increase threefold over the next five years – after having increased eightfold over the past five years – policy control and services creation at large scale has never been more vital for mobile and fixed communications service providers.”

He added that BroadHop’s (News - Alert) widely deployed policy control solutions for mobile and fixed networks will be integrated into Cisco’s Service Provider Mobility Group to provide service providers the flexibility to control, monetize and personalize the types of service they choose, on any network.

“A service provider can integrate BroadHop technology to enable end-users to purchase customized premium service packages. For example, if a consumer desires premium on-demand streaming, BroadHop technology allows the service provider to add value to and monetize this particular service. In return, the user is granted a high level of service and premium bandwidth to ensure the best possible experience.”

In November, BroadHop conducted a survey that indicates there’s high interest in enabling new capabilities via policy management environments. The most significant interest, according to the survey of about 100 telecom industry experts and executives, is the ability to apply policies at the subscriber level, the option to apply trigger billing and charging actions, and the flexibility to address various use cases. More than 61 percent of survey respondents felt applying policies at the level of the individual subscriber was the greatest priority, while 52 percent felt the option to apply trigger billing and charging actions was critical. About 47 percent indicated that next-gen policy management platforms need to be flexible enough to deploy not only a fixed set of target use cases, but also those not yet defined. Twenty-two percent noted the importance of the ability to apply policies in different types of networks, and 15 percent named the capability for policies to be deployed by non-network specialists as an important capability.

“The results of this survey clearly indicate that service providers are looking to the policy management community to deliver new enabling capabilities beyond bandwidth or congestion management and fair use,” Dan Geiger (News - Alert), vice president of marketing at BroadHop, said at the time the survey results were released. “Progressive service providers looking to capture new market share and retain subscribers are increasingly demanding more from their policy management vendors.”

To find out more about Roberto D. De La Mora, Sr. Director, Unified Communications (News - Alert), and Cisco, visit the company at ITEXPO Miami 2013, taking place Jan. 29- Feb 1, in Miami, Florida. Roberto D. De La Mora is speaking during “ Making UC and Collaboration More Business Relevant to Individual Users.” For more information on ITEXPO Miami 2013 click here.