Cisco envisions a future in which enterprise's WANs are connected not by MPLS or broadband, but instead by high-speed, low-latency cellular networks, or what it calls the wireless WAN.

Once relegated to failover, Cisco says today's cellular networks, in particular 5G, offer high enough throughput and low enough latency to be viable alternatives to traditional wired networks.

"About 10-years back everyone would say that my primary circuit from the enterprise branch was MPLS and then the higher bandwidth speed of having an internet circuit became a viable alternative," said Shankar Ramachandran, director of product management, routing platform at Cisco, in an interview with SDxCentral.

In the past, cellular connections lacked the necessary throughput, he said, adding that "5G addresses that and its technology evolution has the ability to provide as much as a gig [1 Gb/s] of throughput for the enterprise branch."

And as the average number of devices per user rises and enterprises begin to adopt IoT devices, the need for these kinds of high-speed connections is becoming even greater.

"Enterprises are looking at 5G as one viable transport to help address this," Ramachandran said. He noted that while Cisco doesn't see 5G ever completely displacing MPLS or broadband, it will be an option.

And this, according to Cisco, will be a boon for enterprises seeking to improve user experiences and productivity.

However, 5G and cellular is only part of the equation. The other half is SD-WAN, which Cisco says will allow enterprises to use all available transport paths, MPLS, broadband, and cellular to provide users with the best possible experiences when accessing cloud services all while ensuring security policies are enforced.

In anticipation of this shift toward wider scale cellular adoption, Cisco has launched two 4G LTE modules for its line of integrated services routers (ISR).

The Cisco CAT18 pluggable interface module provides 4G LTE Advanced Pro connectivity for ISR 1120 and 1160 series routers. The pluggable is capable of 1.2 Gb/s download speeds and features dual micro SIMs, backward compatibility with CAT4 and CAT6 modules, and support for a variety of antennas.

Additionally, Cisco is offering a CAT4 LTE USB dongle for its ISR 1000 platform with a maximum throughput of 75 Mb/s. The dongle aims to address failover requirements for small branch networks.