Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) 
announced an agreement to acquire privately held P-Cube of Sunnyvale, California.
P-Cube is a developer of Internet service control platforms designed to help service providers identify subscribers, classify applications, improve service performance and charge for multiple IP services without costly infrastructure upgrades.
With this acquisition, Cisco plans to offer service providers additional capabilities to control and manage IP services such as Voice-over-IP, interactive gaming, video-on-demand and peer-to-peer networking, as well as create other differentiated offerings.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $200 million in cash and options. The acquisition of P-Cube is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2005.
In connection with the acquisition, Cisco expects to record a one-time charge for purchased in-process research and development expenses not to exceed $0.01 per share.
"Application and subscriber-aware technology solutions like P-Cube's provide the ability to differentiate and control new content-based data services," said Mike Volpi, senior vice president and general manager in the routing technology group at Cisco Systems.
"Cisco's acquisition of P-Cube further emphasizes our commitment to service providers and our on-going development efforts to bring service intelligence into IP data networks," he said.
Today, millions of subscribers connect to an array of data services through a wide spectrum of access methods, including wired and wireless.
P-Cube's service-control technologies are designed to add application-level control to existing IP transport networks -- helping service providers analyze, control and meter application and content-based services.
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