Everything from enterprise strategies to 5G devices caught our audiences' attention during 2018. At a time when so many changes are bearing down on the telecom world, it's clear that a lot of us still have our heads in the cloud.

In its annual message to the industry, a defiant Huawei boasts of an annual sales increase of 21%.

In today's regional roundup: Huawei's troubles could be good news for Ericsson; Enea lines up another acquisition; Orange Business Services lands smart meter IoT deal; Ciena heads to the UK countryside; and more Ericsson.

With its competitors stumbling, its largest customers remaining stable and its markets outside of telecom growing, Ciena is enjoying relatively smooth sailing in CEO Smith's 17th year at the helm.

Why spend more than $600M on a company that makes optical transceivers? It wasn't just one product, but an entire automated manufacturing process that may help Cisco stay ahead of future bandwidth bottlenecks.

In today's regional EMEA roundup: CityFibre celebrates fiber funds; BT revamps its CEO bonus assessment scheme; ETSI launches a blockchain group; and more.

Vendor is on the counter-offensive, claiming strong 5G momentum, a clean security record and expected milestone revenues.

The optical networking vendor said in a filing with the SEC that it will take a charge against earnings related to severance and other related costs.

In the spirit of German Christmas markets, where supersized hot dogs are sold from souped-up garden sheds in snow-starved town squares across Europe, today's Eurobites is mainly about Deutsche Telekom. Oh, and there's a bit about UK broadband.

The optical networking specialist is benefiting from 5G buildouts and webscale traffic monsters, and doing what it can to avoid sitting on a lead.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Bouygues forms FTTH provider; Telia legs it from Kazakhstan; Ericsson demos 5G NR in South Korea; VEON gets new CEO.

Growing restrictions on Huawei by governments and operators outside China could swiftly diminish its role in the global equipment market.

On the sidelines of Light Reading's 2020 Vision Executive Summit, Mattias Fridström, chief evangelist at Telia Carrier, discusses the latest shifts in public Internet traffic trends and whether the likes of 4K/8K video, SD-WAN and 5G will impact international traffic patterns.

Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou is free on about $7.5 million in bail following a Canadian court ruling on Tuesday. President Trump offers to intervene if China will do a trade deal.

In today's EMEA regional roundup: Orange unveils initial 5G plans; the latest boardroom shenanigans at TIM; Turkcell builds TV App Store with Metrological; ADVA unveils its Ensemble Controller.

Optical components vendor will never forget December 2018.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia and friends deploy liquid-based basestation cooling in Helsinki; Liquid Telecom invests in Egypt; Deutsche Telekom launches 5G in Warsaw.

Huawei, with Meng Wanzhou's involvement, allegedly used an 'unofficial' Hong Kong-based subsidiary called Skycom to trick US banks into clearing transactions for Huawei linked to companies in Iran.

A backlash against China's biggest vendor and problems with Ericsson's software could translate into a glorious opportunity for the Finnish firm.

NeoPhotonics' exposure to China and Huawei is at 50%-plus of sales, Raymond James analyst says.

New end-to-end view of customer network, including in-home WiFi, will speed troubleshooting and offer proactive service and sales potential, vendor says.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Huawei finds solace in Portugal; French fiber pushes on; Colt expands in central and eastern Europe; VEON's new man in Ukraine; Nokia gets busy in China and Brazil.

China and Huawei respond with anger and denials after one of the Chinese company's most senior executives, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, is arrested on North American soil.

Heavy Reading's Gabriel Brown discusses multivendor interoperability, x-haul transport and xRAN management interfaces for 5G with Cisco's global director of mobility.

New tinier gateway is hardened for deployment on street furniture to provide backhaul for small cells, WiFi hotspots that will blossom with 5G densification, smart cities and more.

Following a Financial Times report this morning, the UK telecom incumbent has confirmed it will not use Huawei in multiple parts of its network.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Accenture revives Telefónica; Telia's 5G robot; BT tees up new security boss; Deutsche Telekom digitizes breakdown recovery.