Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia and Telecom Italia claim European data speed record; Brits' online angst; Colt calls on ADVA for Ethernet encryption.

Sale of ops in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana serve about 350,000 residential and business customers, and could spark more M&A moves in the region.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Safaricom and Vodacom form JV to buy rights to M-Pesa; Three drops Huawei 5G phone; Huawei warns of Berlin Wall effect; happy birthday to GDPR.

What's better than a Memorial Day weekend mattress sale? A new bill offers interest-free loans from the Treasury to help carriers with fewer than 6 million customers replace Huawei kit.

Heavy Reading's optical guru Sterling Perrin highlights some key trends from the NGON & DCI World event in Nice, including 'Beyond Coherent,' what 400ZR really means for the market, the latest on 5G transport and the FUDfest that is Huawei.

CenturyLink broadens its Ethernet service portfolio as it tidies up loose ends from its Level 3 acquisition.

The opening sessions of this year's NGON & DCI World event in Nice focused on money matters and automation but there was little appetite to discuss the impact of global trade tensions and the US clampdown on Huawei's supply line.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Deutsche Telekom's honeypots highlight hacker horrorshow; Ericsson sets up 5G hub in Moscow.

The global optical networking market has been worth in the region of $15 billion for the past year, but while that number has varied only slightly year to year, what has changed is the nature of the investments and who's splashing the cash.

CenturyLink's Kevin McBride explains why it's a 'great time to be wireline.'

The Super C-band development from Huawei adds an additional 50% to a standard C-band implementation.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: ZTE opens cybersecurity lab in Rome; coaxial startup lands Vodafone Germany deal; payback time for UK mobile operators?

A couple of years removed from its $6B deal to buy Cavium, Marvell suddenly agrees to buy two companies so far this month. There's still 11 days left in May, folks.

At the Big 5G Event in Denver, Gilles Garcia, EMEA comms business lead director at chip specialist Xilinx, suggests the hardware platforms needed to underpin 5G rollouts are being overshadowed by excitement over software developments.

Putting Huawei on the trade blacklist would have dire consequences for the global supply chain and the operators that use its equipment.

CenturyLink CTO Andrew Dugan shares his views on 5G transport technology at the Big 5G Event in Denver on May 8, 2019.

Volta claims that moving routing intelligence to the cloud and running white boxes can slash costs compared with legacy equipment.

The radio access network receives plenty of attention in 5G discussions, but Verizon's Glenn Wellbrock says those "fancy radios" require a strong fiber backbone.

Arista's second-generation 400G routers support built-in security, automation and telemetry for reduced capex and opex.

Ciena's Proactive Network Operations is a closed-loop automation platform that service providers can use to predict and prevent service disruptions.

The move to 5G will also disrupt carriers' timing systems as 5G's timing and clock synchronization requirements are much more strict.

We invited our 2019 Leading Lights awards winners to share their thoughts with the Light Reading video crew. Here's what they had to say:

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: US consortium lands Ireland's National Broadband Plan gig; Telefónica sells 11 data centers; UK broadband speeds creep up.

Find out which companies have taken home the 2019 Leading Lights Awards trophies.

We've added four names to the Hall of Fame this year. Find out who they are...

In our latest poll about cable's next-gen options, DOCSIS 3.1 barely nudged out DAA and FTTH as the industry's biggest tech priority for 2019.

Four companies have made the 2019 shortlist for this coveted award.

Six companies – Anritsu, Infovista, Kentik, Netrounds, Spirent and Viavi Solutions – made the cut in the Outstanding Test & Measurement Vendor category.

There are 11 (yes, count them!) shortlisted entries in this year's category for Most Innovative Telecoms Product (Optical/IP/Carrier Ethernet/FTTH).

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Pompeo heads for London to sound the Huawei alarm (again); Proximus revenue down in Q1; big-buttoned phones still rockin' it for Doro.

Acacia Communications, Finisar, ProLabs, Source Photonics and Xilinx all submitted standout entries for the Outstanding Components Vendor category in this year's Leading Lights contest.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: ONI Telecom does data center interconnect with Nokia; Síminn prepares for 5G with Ericsson; Swisscom Q1 revenue slips.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia goes farming; Inmarsat earnings slump in Q1; CityFibre breaks ground on Cambridge network expansion.