Cisco is uniquely positioned to provide its customers with technology and business expertise gained through its wide experience building the Internet. In addition, Cisco helps service providers build their business with marketing and financial support. For example, the Cisco Powered Network program is designed to link Cisco business customers to Cisco service provider partners. Dial provides temporary, low-bandwidth connections, typically below 64 kbps. Broadband rates over cable and DSL meet the increasing need for new bandwidth-consuming applications, whereas wireless technologies acknowledge our increasingly mobile workforce.
Providers offering Internet access services enjoy a broad customer base.
Both consumers and business customers are key target markets. The focus of this business case is on business-grade Internet access services. The Internet services market is among the fastest growing industries in the world, posting phenomenal growth rates that are not expected to slow any time soon. Competition has brought pricing down, making Internet access available to more potential users, especially in the consumer and small business markets. Competitive businesses now rely upon their networks as strategic assets, and want to extend mission-critical intranet and extranet applications to remote users via service provider networks.