Ericsson and Cisco on Monday announced a global business and technology partnership that will cover networking, cloud, mobility, management and control, and global service capabilities. Together the companies plan to deliver their service provider customers an end-to-end product and services portfolio, secure technology architecture for indoor/outdoor networks, and services needed to digitize countries and create the Internet of Things.

Ericsson and Cisco will be offering end-to-end solutions across network architectures including 5G, cloud, IP, and the Internet of Things - from devices and sensors to access and core networks to the enterprise IT cloud.

The parties have also agreed to discuss FRAND policies and enter a licensing agreement for their respective patent portfolios. As part of this agreement, Ericsson will receive license fees from Cisco.

Ericsson and Cisco have a combined 56,000+ patents, $11 billion of research and development investment, and more than 76,000 services professionals serving customers across more than 180 countries.

The two companies expect the technology partnership to generate additional revenues of $1 billion for each company by 2018.