SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The New IP -- Network operators must evolve to support agility, performance and personalization, Ericsson's Siva Ananmalay said here Thursday.

The head of the IP Router product line for the Swedish networking giant admitted his segment of Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC)'s business isn't what the company is known for -- that would be its dominant position in the mobile market, where 40% of traffic goes over Ericsson gear. But the vendor has its hardware and software in 80% of major global networks, Ananmalay noted, and it is taking a holistic approach to delivering these key attributes in its latest product launches, made this week. (See Ericsson Revamps Its RAN With RBS 6000 Successor.)

Applications are what are driving the bandwidth explosion, since just having more bandwidth doesn't change consumer behavior without the ability to use it, he said. That's why it's important that service providers combine agility, performance and personalization to give individuals a unique experience.

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Ericsson's Virtual Home Gateway, launched in partnership with Telstra in mid-2014, is a prime example of this combination, Ananmalay said, because it enables personalized use of bandwidth within the home on a per-user basis. Parents can set parental controls on their kids' use of broadband, optimization can be done on a per-user or per-service basis and security such as firewalls can also be added as needed. Services are cloud-based and delivered on demand without a truck roll.

"By doing that instead of managing just a connection to the home, which is what happens today, we can give an experience to each individual in the home," he said. "Of course, you still need performance -- you aren't going to do this on a slow DSL line."

Figure 1: Ericsson's Siva Ananmalay Head of IP router product line business looks at home on The New IP catwalk.

Increasingly, the distinction between residential and mobile broadband is fading, Ananmalay said, and consumers expect to have the same personalization capability with them on their mobile devices. Parents, for example, still want to control their kids' online behavior using mobile data. The performance and agility requirements for mobile services will vary, however, both in terms of bandwidth and latency.

"If you are driving a smart car, you don't want to wait even seconds for the signal from a smart intersection," he noted.

Agility gets service providers into the market ahead of their competitors and that impacts revenues, according to Ericsson's research.

Launching a new service one month ahead of the competition can boost revenues by 2% and subscribers by 1%. Launch that same service a year ahead of the competition, "and the benefits go up four-fold," he said. "Being able to deliver quickly and customized means you can segment customers to generate revenue and profit."

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading