So the Summer of 2015 is quickly coming to a close here in New England, which means Fall is coming, and the leaves will soon begin to change color with the cooler temperatures. But according to ACC Research the Mobile Infrastructure is getting hot again, and starting to grow, which is great news.

According to ACG Research since 2014 mobile operators have been shifting more of their expenditures from the RAN to the packet core and to IP backhaul to more efficiently and economically offload data traffic and deploy innovative new services.The RAN market continues to decline compared to the IP backbone and backhaul equipment market as the large-scale mobile broadband deployments in China were not enough to offset weaker trends in the advanced markets of Europe and North America.

The great news for Cisco is that according to ACG Research Cisco leads the mobile industry in:

• Mobile IP Infrastructure at 33.9%
• Mobile IP Backbone at 68.5%
• Packet Core (EPC + MPC) at 26.3%

Source: www.acgresearch.com

What's driving the uptick in the Mobile Infrastructure?

Mobile Video 

With the recent announcements of"merger mania" in the Video and Mobile market, we expect the Mobile Video Growth continue to skyrocket putting additional strain on the Mobile Infrastructure. You know the old saying "if you can't beat them, join them"? Well, many Service Providers are doing just that to compete against the Video Over-The-Top (OTT) Providers with some operators like AT&T recently competed its purchase of DirecTV, Verizon completed its purchase of AOL, last year Vodafone purchased ONO, as well as many other Service Providers acquiring many other video assets.

According to the 2015 Cisco VNI by 2019, more than 14 percent of monthly IP traffic will derive from cellular connections, and 53 percent of monthly IP traffic will come from Wi-Fi connections globally, making differentiated and monetizing mobile strategies more important for all service providers.

The Internet of Everything (IoE) and M2M Growth

According to Machina Research growing numbers of machine-to-machine (M2M) connected devices, as part of the emergence of an Internet of Things, will create challenges for Mobile Network Operators. The absolute volume of devices and mobile network traffic will be ostensibly quite manageable, with M2M accounting for just 19% of connections and 4% of traffic. However, traditional handsets, tablets and mobile broadband connections are relatively homogenous in their demands, in terms of usage, geographical location, criticality, security and numerous other criteria. M2M devices are much more diverse. As a result, M2M devices have the potential to place completely different demands on the network.

IOE Winning Customer Outcome: AT&T Connected Car

Cisco and AT&T recently announced that the AT&T is now utilizing Cisco's Virtual Mobile Network Technology within its Connected Car Services.

^{"The connected car space is truly a global business opportunity for us."}

^{- Joe Mosele, Vice President of Business Development, AT&T}

Business Challenge / Opportunity

• AT&T wanted to offer the same experience across multiple connected devices, whether in homes or in cars, and to connect easily with one user's profile across both
• Stay relevant and grow revenue from innovate mobile value -added services

Network Solution

• The Drive is AT&T's connected car platform, a modular solution that automakers can use to choose solutions ranging from connectivity to billing solutions to data analytics. By making a connected car a device compatible with its mobile share plans, the option of connecting cars becomes feasible and appealing to a wider audience
• The Cisco solution components included the Cisco Virtualized Packet Core, Policy Suite, and PRIME Network Management

Business Results

• AT&T gains directly through adding cars to its mobile share plans, as well as indirectly with automakers adding data connectivity to their car models.

For more information on the Cisco Connected Car Solution, watch our recent Cisco Knowledge Network Session network entitled "Driving the Connected Car Toward New Service Provider Opportunities "

According to ACG Research the Mobile infrastructure will continue to be a highly dynamic market for the next several years as carriers are getting ready to offer new services and technologies such as VoWi-Fi, VoLTE, network function virtualization (NFV), small cells, Hotspot 2.0, millimeter wave backhaul.

"It has been an interesting quarter as the LTE key revenues shifted from North America and EMEA to Asia, which is becoming a very vibrant market across all the mobile technologies because of the large deployments and tremendous demand for mobile data," states Elias Aravantinos, principal analyst, ACG.

Cisco's continued success in the Mobile IP Infrastructure has been the result of our relentless focus on quality and execution of new features and close collaboration with customers and partners. Our ability to supply our customers with our IP Infrastructure Software on either a purpose-built Cisco platform, or allow for placement on a COTS hardware platform with the same quality has been key.

For the full report, please go to http://acgcc.com

For more information see our Cisco's LTE Solutions.

For more details on Machina Research: https://machinaresearch.com

Cisco Knowledge Network Session network entitled "Driving the Connected Car Toward New Service Provider Opportunities

I'll be back real soon with more Cisco mobility updates from the analyst community and around the market as they happen. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, we'd love to hear from you on what you're looking forward to in the mobile market. Tweet us @CiscoSPMobility for questions or comments.