Cisco plans to acquire cloud-native mobile core developer Working Group Two

Cisco plans to acquire cloud-native mobile core developer Working Group Two for $150 million.

Cisco said the acquisition will enable it to bolster its mobility services platform to help operators launch new offers across IoT and industry verticals.

The outfit is run as a joint venture between Cisco and Norwegian telco Telenor after it was spun out by the carrier in 2017.
Once the transaction is complete, Working Group Two will be fully owned by Cisco, with the new owner acquiring Telenor’s 44.6 percent stake in the entity.

 Cisco Networking SVP Masum Mir said the two companies share a common ambition to deliver a global, programmable mobile core as a service, and are remarkably aligned to this shared vision.

“The consumption model is simple and comprehensive, supporting all stakeholders. The end result is a mobility services platform that can dramatically simplify mobile network deployments, provide enhanced Edge experiences, enable new and advanced use cases, as well as support simple application development. WG2’s expertise in the mobile space brings capabilities crucial to the enterprise market including complete authentication, provisioning, voice, messaging, and data services, all of which will be rolled into our existing control centre offers.”

Telenor stated that, since spinning off Working Group Two, it’s grown the company from five employees to 90, and has a global customer base in Europe, North America, and Asia.

WG2 will join Cisco’s Provider Mobility organization, confirmed Mir, who noted that the acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of Cisco’s FY24.