Denver-based BroadHop has developed a traffic management and policy server deployed in more than 70 wireline and mobile carrier networks around the world. The technology allows a carrier to develop service tiers based on bandwidth or application. Such a “policy” could take the shape of a simple speed boost – customers who pay more each month could get access to a faster pipe. The reverse is also true: it’s a policy server that’s downgrading your bandwidth when carriers throttle your data connection.

But BroadHop’s technology can be used to create much more sophisticated tiers than merely “fast” or “slow.” Policy could be used to craft video-streaming or VoIP plans, which prioritize video or IP communications packets over all others from the network core all the way up to the airwaves. That traffic could not only be shaped for different service tiers, it could be used to charge different rates for different types of traffic.

It’s that kind of advanced packet prioritization that Cisco seems most interested in, particularly as it mobile carrier customers search for ways to replace their threatened voice and SMS revenue.

In the Cisco blog post, VP of Corporate Business Development Hilton Romanski said that BroadHop would become part of Cisco’s mobile carrier group and its technology would become the baseline from which Cisco would build a raft of new applications. For instance, Romanski said BroadHop tech could be used to power a mobile video-on-demand service where a customer paying for a movie would find his bandwidth boosted and his video bits prioritized over all other traffic.

Operators like Verizon and Leap are already experimenting with the concept of a “turbo” button on mobile phones, and AT&T is broaching the delicate subject of having developers foot the bill for their mobile traffic their apps generate. If these concepts ever see the light of day, the policy servers like BroadHop’s are going to become critical elements in the network.

Cisco certainly isn’t the only one who spots this trend. All of the major mobile infrastructure and software vendors have acquired or invested in building up their policy portfolios in the last few years. The most recent is Citrix, which bought Bytemobile earlier this year.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile
• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

Bytemobile has two core products: Unison and the T-Series Adaptive Traffic Management System, both of which use a combination of content caching, deep packet inspection (DPI), policy management, analytics and video and web traffic optimization technologies to shape mobile data traffic as it traverses the operator’s network.

The platforms can be used to pare down payloads bound for the mobile phone – for instance scaling video to the resolution of each device’s screen– and manage congestion over an operator’s 3G and 4G data networks. Another key feature is the ability of Unison and T-Series to prioritize certain packets over others. Carriers already use traffic prioritization to throttle customers that exceed soft data caps. But the technology could become more significant in the future if carriers decide to give their own VoIP services preferential treatment and start favoring specific content partners’ video and Web services through “toll-free” traffic agreements.

Privately held and based in Santa Clara, Calif., Bytemobile isn’t the biggest infrastructure vendor in the wireless industry – it has 300 employees – but it certainly has a lot of reach. Bytemobile equipment is in 130 carriers’ core networks, which collectively serve 2 billion subscribers in 60 countries. The firm estimates that 20 petabytes of data pass through its networks daily.

Citrix and Bytemobile already have a relationship to build on. At Mobile World Congress, Bytemobile announced it would house its T-Series management platform on Citrix’s NetScaler cloud networking platform.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• New solutions for the evolving mobile network
• The future of Wi-Fi in the enterprise
• From car to cloud: the future of the in-vehicle app landscape

In an attempt to uncover the real reason behind the release, I called a Comcast spokeswoman and asked her if this was an exclusive deal with Vonage, and if any money was changing hands. She said that the agreement doesn’t preclude others from working with Comcast, that in fact it’s working with a variety of companies and groups. And no, there is no money changing hands.

Still, the press release kept nagging at me. And it wasn’t until I read Cynthia Brumfield’s post (Welcome back, Cynthia, from your blog vacation) that I realized Comcast might have unknowingly admitted to messing with Vonage’s VoIP traffic.

What’s interesting and surprising is that Vonage is not based on P2P technology, unlike Skype and other competitive VoIP providers. So this effort by Comcast, which extends to a seemingly unrelated “over-the-top” technology seems, well, out of the blue. Has Vonage had problems with Comcast causing problems for its customers, problems that stemmed not from the same kind of packet reset technology that spurred the initial controversy?

Well I don’t know about recently, but some two years ago a lot people complained about Vonage’s service quality on Comcast. Comcast, of course, denied that it was blocking Vonage traffic.

That was then. However, the fact that the two companies are announcing a new working relationship has me wondering if Comcast was messing with Vonage’s calls all along — you know, as part of its “network management.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter
• A near-term outlook for big data