Most carriers struggle with coverage - says Cisco

"If you take a look at what most carriers struggle with today, it's really with coverage" says Kelly Ahuja, general manager of Cisco's Service Provider Mobility Group.

This simple statement might make you think that Cisco are launching some clever technology to increase the amount of bandwidth available, but actually it was in relation to paying $475 million for Israeli company Intucell.

What's really significant about this is that the acquisition is all about planning, configuring and managing cellular networks automatically - that's right it's another massive network management deal.

This comes hot on the heels of other massive deals including Alcatel-Lucent's recent Reliance win and Riverbed's $921 million acquisition of Opnet and shows a clear trend for network management coming to the fore in 2013.

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2013, The #YearOfNetworkManagement