Look to the communications/wireless market of a decade ago – or even five years ago – and it bears little in common with today’s market. Mayfield’s venture capital investment approach has shifted to anticipate these changes. Historically, the firm’s deals focused on network equipment and infrastructure, leveraging Mayfield Managing Director Yogen Dalal’s legacy in co-authoring the TCP Specification. That specification helped create Ethernet and led to Mayfield’s investments in companies like 3Com, which based its product line on the technology. More recently, the firm has invested in router maker Tasman Networks and enterprise WAN equipment maker Peribit Networks, startups which were successfully acquired by Nortel and Juniper.

Today, the telecommunications industry is again consolidating as voice, data and video technologies converge. In many ways, this new communications world is much more complicated than the old one. That’s why any startup navigating this new ecosystem requires an experienced partner.

Here are some ideas that are driving Mayfield’s wireless investments:

Startups must have a global perspective built into their DNA. Yes, the startup team has office space in Silicon Valley, but the management team often spans the globe, planning how the company will hire, design, manufacture and sell globally. “All our companies think global from day one,” says Mayfield Managing Director Janice Roberts.

All players must navigate multiple landscapes. That landscape includes cable, cellular, wireline and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs.) As technology evolves “there will be an eventual path of simplification for the consumer no matter what sort of network you’re using,” says Mayfield Managing Director David Ladd.

Power is shifting from a carrier-driven to a consumer model. Consumer demand, not carrier control, is shaping the market by phasing out the per-minute phone and replacing it with bundled VoIP packages and free services like Skype.

Enterprise applications are increasingly extending to the wireless world. New technology lets workers wirelessly screen unwanted calls, conference with colleagues and access corporate phone directories. New Microsoft and open source applications for handheld devices such as Smartphones and PDAs are keeping office workers constantly connected.

The market is moving beyond voice to wireless data services for the world’s 1.7 billion mobile phone users. In China, Mayfield startups have launched wireless matchmaking services that reach more than 5 million subscribers and have brought free SMS service to millions more.

Any startup offering networking equipment must work with the existing ecosystem.  Smart companies are exploiting the opportunities that giants like Juniper, Cisco and Nortel are missing, building applications and products that solve the most pressing problems from network congestion to bandwidth management.