Ericsson has invested heavily in becoming an all-round IP player, not just lord of a mobile ghetto, but its efforts are dwarfed by Cisco and even Alcatel-Lucent. Meanwhile, Cisco has danced around Ericsson’s RAN territory in various ways but never scored much success. In a world of fixed/mobile convergence and all-IP, the logic of the two companies uniting is overwhelming. The news that the two giants were entering a deep strategic partnership focus nevertheless still came as something of a surprise, given that the recent history of the networks industry has centered so heavily around which firm would lead the IP market of the future – and by inference, whether the established 3GPP community would set the agenda, or the…